BUFFY tVS and the Alien Tripods from Outer Space
by Johnny Snowball
Summary: When an excited Time Lord lands his TARDIS right in the middle of an alien invasion of Sunnydale, he finds the mythical Slayer, a race of alien nomads and a terrible virus. Can The Doctor and the Slayer save the day? Only time will tell... S.A.S Episode 4
1. Doctor Who?

The_** Secret Agent Slayer **_Series

**Episode 4**

This is a Doctor Who/Buffy the Vampire Slayer crossover (with a hint of War of the Worlds and The Tripods thrown in) forming the 4th part of my Secret Agent Slayer Series. This is the tenth Doctor as played by David Tennant during his solo adventures around the time prior to 'Planet of the Dead'.

Enjoy!

* * *

When an excited Time Lord lands his TARDIS right in the middle of an alien invasion of Sunnydale, he encounters the mythical Slayer, a race of time travelling alien nomads and a terrible virus. Can the Doctor and the Slayer save the day? Only time will tell…

* * *

**BUFFY the VAMPIRE SLAYER**

and the

_**Alien Tripods from Outer Space**_

_Doctor Who?_ / 00**1**

In 1877, the first police telephone appeared in Albany, New York followed in 1883 by call boxes across the States of the US. Glasgow saw the first British call box in 1891 and it was a red iron contraption with a gas-filled lantern atop but by 1925 the blue wooden rectangular boxes had reached England. There were 685 of these on the streets of London alone by '53 and now, in February 2003, in a small cliff-side alcove just off the beach of Sunnydale, California, one of these 1950's police boxes materialised in a swirl of sand and with the screeching of an alert siren as the Doctor landed on Earth.

* * *

Buffy Summers, Willow Rosenberg, and Xander Harris, three of the four members of the elite Slay Team, along with Anya Jenkins the former demon, and Tara Maclay, were spending the day at the beach.

Last August had been a terrible time for the Scooby Gang as they'd lost Dawn. But it wasn't as simple as her dying. She'd been turned by a hominus nocturna and now she was vampire. Buffy had planned to find the expert in hominus nocturna – Blade – and get a cure for Dawn's virus, but 2 days after she'd captured her changed undead sister; Buffy had found her gone. She'd escaped and disappeared and Buffy had no idea where…

It had been a tough few months. The Watchers' Council had been kind enough to throw only light jobs their way since that time. But, for most of them, Buffy had stayed home. This was the first time they'd managed to get her out socialising in those months since. They knew it would be tough and slow. But they had to bring her back from the brink somehow. A fun trip to the beach on a cool but sunny February day seemed as good a way as any.

"Okay," said Xander on his camper stool, "if I light this barbecue will you promise me it's not gonna storm it down? I mean no flash floods of biblical proportions like last time."

Willow realised he was addressing her. "Hey, that wasn't me. That was nature heralding the arrival of the Prince of Darkness! Dracula's gone. The sky's clear." She opened her palms and beckoned. "So gimme some meat."

"Hear that?" he jibed. "Will wants sausage. Who woulda thunk."

The red-head threw their beach ball at him. "Don't be gross."

"Does Tara know?" Xander went on with a childish giggle. Tara couldn't resist the urge to smile. Even Buffy too.

He lit the small stove. "C'mon, let's get things cooking so I can kick your butts at volley ball. While Rupert's away the mice will play."

"Does anyone know what this meeting's about with the Council?" asked Tara. "London's a long way to go just for an update."

"I caught him on the phone to an English chick he knows," said Xander. "If you ask me, London's a long way to go just to get–" The ball hit him again.

"I hear we're swapping the beach of Sunnydale for Hawaii this summer," mentioned Tara.

Anya beamed and wrapped herself around Xander's arm. "I finally made him reserve the service and reception."

Willow looked at them with envy. "If you're getting married in Hawaii… where're you gonna have the honeymoon?"

"Paris," said Anya.

"Hawaii," corrected Xander.

"Paris."

"Paris is cold and soggy. Hawaii."

"Sorry I asked," Will gave a grimace. "How's the sausage coming?"

Xander took that as his escape route.

"Paris," Anya whispered.

A sudden loud and earth-shaking sonic boom drew their attention to the sky.

Something was falling to earth in a pillar of smoke and flame.

"Good God is that a meteor?" Xander shot up from his stool. "Good God did I just sound like Giles?"

Buffy stepped forward, a knot in her stomach. "It's not a meteor. Look… it's turning."

Tara watched. Buffy was right. "It's heading right for Breaker's Woods."

In an instant it was down and hidden behind the town. At first nothing happened, and then came the mighty bang of its impact and the shock wave. Xander's stove tipped over and spread hot coals across the sand.

Not one, not two, but three more sonic booms followed as more balls of fire blazed through the skies.

The Doctor stepped out of his TARDIS and into the mild sunshine. The beach, the ocean, the sun. Brilliant!

"Aw, this…is…beautiful." Then he checked his feet to find them sinking into the sand and groaned. "Aww, It's gonna get all in my shoes."

From far along the beach came the shrill screams of absolute terror.

A grin stretched out across his face from ear to ear. "Blimey. That didn't take long!"

The Doctor went running out across the seafront towards imminent danger. _Marvellous_!

The second ball of fire disappeared behind the townscape and joined the first out in Breaker's Woods. The third shot across the nearer Miller's Woods, skimming and burning the treetops, and crashed down somewhere beyond. The fourth and final falling inferno took a sweeping decent, circling over the town, falling against the cliffs and taking out a huge chunk of the rock edge before splashing out about a mile out into the Pacific.

The Scoobs looked to each other with open jaws, utterly speechless. What on earth… or, more to the point, what _not_ on earth…?

Breaker's Woods was about a 45-minute drive from town and from that distant place came the first signal. A deep booming horn blow that shook the town.

Xander swallowed hard. "It's War of the Worlds…"

"Don't, Xander," Will beseeched, "You'll scare people."

A second horn rumbled out in those woods followed closely by a third from past Miller's forest. A moment later, the waters out in the ocean erupted in a geyser with a fourth booming call from under the seas. The town was in panic with people running and fleeing in their cars.

"I think people are already scared," Xander replied.

"Look!" Tara called, pointing to the sight of the first and second crash.

Rising like a giant from behind the distant tree line, a bronze domed tripod lifted into the air on hinged metal legs. A circular iris opened on its high dome and some kind of energy wave blasted out across the land.

The Tripods rose.

Then came the screams…

Xander grabbed a hold of his fiancée and pulled her close. "What the hell _are_ they?"

"They're alien tripods. From outer space."

They turned to see a thin man in a loose blue suit and sneakers with a stylish rooster helm of brown hair. He sounded out of breath and British, though not as posh as Giles.

Tara directed a frown at him. "Alien?"

"If they're alien then obviously they're from outer space," Anya pointed out.

"Ah, but they really _are_ from outer space," said the thin Brit. "They have no home world. Their Tripods have appeared all over time and the universe but never fixed in one place and never in the same place twice. They're nomads. The gypsy folk of the galaxies." They were giving him funny looks. "Well… that's _my_ guess anyway."

They regarded him with comical bemusement and he loved it.

Anya was the first to speak up. "Why would aliens come to Sunnydale?"

"It's a Hellmouth, Sweetie," said Xander, "everything comes here."

She wasn't convinced. "Demons, ghosts and vampires – that makes sense. But aliens from outer space?"

"Maybe it's more of those Deceptathingys the Autobots told you about," Tara wondered.

Xander noticed Buffy's stake had found its way into her hand. "I don't think Mr Pointy's gonna do much good today," he noted.

The thin man's attention was now drawn to Buffy. "You have a stake? A wooden stake? Why do you have a wooden stake?"

Buffy fumbled, "Um… for the… tent… that we don't have…" She slipped the weapon back into her pants.

…Sunnydale…21st century…Hellmouth…demons and vampires…Autobots…wooden stake…

"Hang on a minute…" The odd cockerel-haired man pointed his finger at them and wiggled it about before settling on the short blonde with the sharp stake. "It can't be…no…it never is…it is! …You're Fluffy! Fluffy Summers! Fluffy the Vampire Slayer!"

Her eyes opened wide with surprise. "How do you know about that? Who are you? And it's _Buffy_. Not _Fluffy_."

"What? Really?" He ogled her, perplexed.

"Uh…yeah, I'm pretty sure."

"Oh, well, in that case, Wow! I can't believe you're really real. You're supposed to be Beowulf – a myth, a legend, a tall tale, just a story, well, not just any story – The Slayer Chronicles – up there with Tolkien's Ring mythology and, what was the other one? Harry Potty!"

"I think you mean Harry Potter," Willow corrected.

"Right. So… you really saved the world with a pencil crayon? And the whole angst-ridden love arc with Angel? The girls love that one. Brought a tear to _my_ eye, if I'm honest. Doomed love… aaahhh," he sighed. "Oh, wait, what year are we at again? Twenty-oh-three?…So, you defeated evil Baron Samedi already with the dragon scale knife of Osiris in the shocking 'You Only Die Twice' chronicle?"

"How do you know–?"

"What about the cross-dimensional rift and the battle with the Cuban and the mist and the tentacles? Did that happen yet? Those tentacles…" He shivered and saw their faces. "Oh, I'm too early. That's a great one. And how do I know? The famous Watchers' Diaries by Ripper Giles, of course. You haven't heard of them? Of course you haven't! But, in about three and a half thousand years when archaeologists discover the diaries of Rupert Giles, pretty much everyone will. No one ever imagined the stories were true, though! Strange… Fluffy the Vampire Slayer and the Alien Tripods from Outer Space… don't think I've heard of that one."

"It's _Buffy_!"

"Is it? The manuscripts must have suffered ink degradation over the millennia. Though his handwriting was fairly illegible. Or, quite possibly, an editorial typo. These things happen. I once found my way into a diary as '_A_' doctor. Can you believe that? '_A_ doctor', like I'm just any old dog's body."

"What are you talking about?"

He regarded them incongruously. "Quite right, I _am_ rambling, I do tend to ramble. But, but, it's just… ancient nomadic alien tripods… and Fluffy Summers in the flesh… I _am_ honoured."

"For the last time, my name is _Buffy_."

"Right. Sorry. Buffy. …Are you sure?"

"Who _are_ you?"

"Actually it's _who_ I am. I'm the Doctor." He put out a gangly hand but no one took it.

"Doctor _who_?"

"Now you're getting it. Come on!" And off he went across the beach.

* * *

_**DISCLAIMER**__:_

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER is a Registered Trademark of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.

DOCTOR WHO is property of the BBC.


	2. The Tripods

**BUFFY the VAMPIRE SLAYER**

and the

_**Alien Tripods from Outer Space**_

_The Tripods_ / 00**2**

Buffy kicked up sand as she chased the stranger back to the sidewalk.

The Doctor stopped on the concrete and reached into his trouser pocket. Buffy caught up to him as he raised a device layered with buttons and circuitry to his eyes.

He examined the distant forest and locked the far Tripod with his laser spectrum penetrating binoculars. "Yep, yep," he mumbled to himself. "High yield gravity beam emitters… well-collimated beam. Uh-huh. Yep."

"What are you saying?" questioned the Slayer.

His binoculars made a wet fart sound and he recoiled from the eyepiece. "They suck," he answered, giving the device a good hard slap. It let out a tired beep and he looked through it again.

The others caught up.

"Yeah, big time," agreed Xander at the sight of the destructive machine as it ripped away at the forest.

The Doctor squinted sideways at him. "No – their gravity beams. They suck." He gave a slurp.

The Tripod from the ocean rose up into the air as it moved inland, closing in on the beach. It's enormous domed top sent an energy wave blasting into the water and kicking up a rolling sea-spray.

"Um…Maybe we should get the hell out of here?" suggested Tara.

Anya agreed.

Buffy thought. Giles was away. "We should go to Xander's and figure out the next step," she decided.

The gang nodded and moved out.

Buffy pointed an impressively serious finger in The Doctor's direction. "You're coming with us. You know something."

"Well, everybody knows _something_," he replied as he followed them.

They left all their stuff there on the beach and headed for Xander's Jeep.

* * *

The Doctor hobbled into the apartment with his right foot in his hand, tearing the sneaker off and shaking half the beach out onto the floor.

"What are you doing?" gasped Anya in horror. "My carpet!"

The Timelord rubbed at his bare foot. "Oh, sorry. Sand. Was getting right in my toes…" he pushed a long finger between each of his wiggling podiatric digits.

Anya cringed and fired back; "Why didn't you do that _outside_?"

"Um, well, the, the big, um, alien tripods… for one."

Buffy was beginning to find his jolly and carefree attitude a little tiresome. "Who did you say you were?"

"The Doctor. And I still am."

"You sound British," noted Tara. "Like Giles,"

Anya snubbed her nose up. "Giles sounds better educated."

"But Giles isn't a Lord, is he? And, as brilliant as he is, he's not half as brilliant as I am." He struggled against his sweaty foot but finally managed to pop his shoe back on.

Xander was at the window peering through the blinds. Buffy joined him.

"Will," she said, "we need to make a plan – call HQ and see where we stand. This could be happening everywhere."

"Willow!" cried the Doctor, pointing feverishly at her. "Willow Rosenberg! …So, you're a witch. Haven't seen one of those since…oh…two hundred years from now. And then there were the Carrionites in the Globe. And you," he said to Anya, popping on a pair of thick-framed spectacles from his suit pocket and examining her closely. "You're old. Older than _me_, even. Wow. That's annoying."

"That's my Anya alright," Xander concurred.

The Doctor removed his goggles and saw what was on Anya's finger, then Xander's. "Aww, the rings – you're getting married soon! Congratulations! It's gonna be _gorgeous_."

"We're having a Hawaiian waterfall wedding," Anya beamed, suddenly much happier. It was her favourite subject, after all.

"A beach wedding," corrected Xander.

"Noo, a waterfall wedding."

"Waterfalls are dank and wet. Beach wedding."

"Now look what I did," the Doctor winced, backing away into the kitchen area.

"Waterfall," mouthed Anya.

The Timelord grinned. "Ha-haa, we know who'll wear the trousers in this marriage."

Xander giggled. At first. Then realised he was being mocked. "Now, listen here, Doctor Whoever."

"How do you know?" Buffy suddenly asked the stranger.

"Know what?"

"Everything. Like that Willow's a witch and that Anya is old. And what do you mean 'older than you even'? How do you know all this stuff?"

"Because I'm the Doctor," he answered, putting the specs on again and looking over the readings on his bizarre binoculars. "Look, it's really rather a lot to go into right now with the alien invasion and all."

Buffy stepped up into his face and pointed a warning finger up his nose. "You're gonna tell me exactly who you are and everything you know right now starting with aliens."

"How bossy are _you_! They edited _that_ out of the diaries." He gave the others a wink and they couldn't help but smile.

Buffy wasn't smiling. "Aliens, _Doctor_. You're telling us there're more of them out there than just the Transformers?"

"Aliens? Yeah there's loads of 'em. Can't go to the intergalactic post office without running into at least half a dozen species. Well, not so much now of course, but at some point."

"How much do you know about _these_ aliens? The ones out there right now attacking Sunnydale."

"Not much, actually. I've heard rumours but this…this is the first time I've seen the Tripods and it's wrong…it's all wrong, they shouldn't be here."

"So, you don't actually know _anything_. That's what you're saying?"

"Umm… pretty much… yep. Which makes this a perfect chance to fix that, don't you think? Wha'd'ya say? A little recon? A little action? It's been a while, hasn't it?"

They didn't look particularly enthused.

"C'mon Scooby Gang, where's your sense of adventure?"

* * *

He led them outside to see the Tripods closing in on the town. He knew his less-than-rousing call-to-arms wasn't exactly Braveheart's last speech, but he had at least expected the mythical Scooby warriors to be a bit more eager to get hands-on and defend the Earth.

In the street, he handed Buffy the binoculars. She held them to her face and saw what was happening in Miller's Woods through the futuristic zoom display.

"Natural resources," explained the Doctor. "They're stripping the surface of its natural resources." Buffy handed his device back and he looked through at the giant vacuum beam that sucked up everything in its wake and drew it into the high dome of the Tripod. "Trees, rocks – minerals, soil…" He brought the binocs down in surprise then looked again.

"…A pair of deer and a cow…" he shook his head at the sight. "Unless we do something, they'll strip this planet bare in…ooh…a couple of weeks."

"You got some kinda plan, Doctor man?" asked Xander.

"We'll take your tank," said the Doctor, jumping in the back of the Jeep.

Buffy gave a nod to Will and Xander and they climbed in.

Soon as Xander turned the key, the Doctor lowered his window and called to Anya; "I'll have him back in time for tea."

"You better," she said. "He's making it."

* * *

With a screech, Xander tore the Jeep away and Anya went inside to clean her carpet.

Willow, sat in the back with the otherworldly Englishman, asked; "Where are we going?"

The Doctor pointed through the windshield ahead as a giant three-legged machine entered town and began tearing up the lawns and gardens. "See that great big alien tripod there?"

"The hundred-foot-tall menacing one tearing up the town?" asked Xander, just so they were clear.

"That's the one. Take us to it."

Buffy turned back in her shotgun seat. "That's your plan?"

He grinned in delight and gave her a daring wink.

For the first time Buffy saw something of the warrior in this man's eyes. Adventure was in his blood.

Xander didn't like the crazy man's crazy plan. "We don't know what's goin' on in there! Those trees and animals could be heading straight into a giant grinder…"

"Or a furnace," added Will.

The stranger's grin widened. "I know! Exciting isn't it?"

He was looking at her with a challenging eye again and Buffy began to smile.

The Doctor addressed the other two – the Slayer was already in the bag; "Come on, Slayerettes, …let's go get em!" They glared at him. Even Xander through the mirror. "Too much? …Yeah…sorry…won't happen again."

* * *

Within a minute they were pulled up behind the high-rise bronze Tripod, standing in the street, for the most part still not liking the plan.

The Tripod's enormous legs creaked at their metal hinges as it moved steadily up the street before them. The dome of the machine was angled down, rotating slowly as the shimmering energy wave tore plants from gardens, grass from soil, then soil from ground – all whirling into a mass of compost that fired up the wave into the lofty dome and disappeared.

"Ready or not," said the Doctor as he offered Buffy his hand. She took it. "Here we go…"

He ran with Buffy toward the Tripod, alongside it, past it. Buffy wanted to pull away but he held her hand tightly. It was comforting. He was brave. She needed to be brave too. She was the Slayer and… ah, crap… what the hell was she doing?

They reached the gravity wave and the Doctor led her into its wake – he jumped up like he was diving back onto a soft bed and she jumped in with him.

Will and Xander watched as they entered the wave and were sent soaring up like bullets into the mouth of the machine. They looked to one and other sheepishly.

Holding onto each other tight, they ran forward and leapt into the beam.

Xander and Willow lost their breath as they were sucked up from the Earth at lightening speed.

* * *

They hit dirt then landed violently against the hard metal floor inside the Tripod dome. Will and Xander peeled themselves up off the floor to see Buffy and the mad man were already brushing themselves off.

The loud groan of the gravity beam deepened and the Doctor pushed them all to one side as another load of earth entered the opening behind them and crashed against the back of the room. It was a circular orange-brown room. The dirt and plants were compacted into an area beyond the back of the room. The sound of grinding gears and burning told them they had been right. The natural resources were being processed down the line. Crushed and burned.

The Doctor found an exit vent against the wall that led away into tunnels. They began to leave when Willow looked back, remembering the animals. There was no sign of the deer but, right across the room, among the dirt and foliage, was the cow. It's hind legs were trapped in the compact soil that fed the furnace-grinder. The cow was done for. More soil would come up from outside and push the poor creature deeper into the machine until…

It let out a sad moo.

The others couldn't stop Willow as she dared to cross the room, dodging flying chunks of someone's front garden, to rescue the moo cow. She freed its back legs, took it by the rope that held its bell, and steered it back to the vent. The others were gawking at her.

"We can't leave poor Daisy here," she petitioned.

"You already named the cow?" Xander said in amazement.

The cow mooed and she gave it a rub on the neck. It still had a clump of grass hanging from its mouth.

The Doctor shrugged. "Well, let's get moo-ving then."

Buffy rolled her eyes and followed him into the tunnel.

* * *

They came to the end of the tunnel where a vent led them into the passages of the crew section. The Doctor removed his sonic screwdriver and held it in front of him like a handgun as he led them cautiously forward.

"Where are we heading?" Xander asked quietly, sensing the sneaky element of the man's entry into the corridor.

Daisy's hoofed feet clattered on the metal floor.

"Command centre," he replied as he edged onward, squinting at the noisy cow.

Buffy noticed his little pen-like weapon. "What is that? A death ray?"

The Doctor stopped. "What? No."

"Is it some kind of protective shield?" said Will.

He continued on. "Nope."

"Well, what does it do?" asked Xander. "Paralyse your enemies? Interfere with their brain patterns rendering them completely at your command?"

He stopped again. "Now that's just silly."

"So what is it?" said Buffy.

"Screwdriver. Sonic."

The Slayer showed him a cynical eyebrow. "And why are you waving it around like a ray gun?"

"So that bad guys think it's a ray gun," he replied like she was dumb. "Plus it makes me feel macho."

Daisy mooed.

"…_More_…macho…" he added. The Doctor aimed his screwdriver and pressed onward. Buffy gave a quiet snigger. He stopped again. "Look… when some big scary monster jumps out and kills you because I wasn't there to wave my sparkly beepy stick at them, you'll be sorry." He activated the blue buzzing light on the end before turning to move off. "AH!" The Doctor leapt back. DALEK!

He pushed them aside just as a bolt of energy fired from the Dalek's front-mounted extermination ray and shot by them.

He pointed his sparkly beepy screwdriver at the surprising enemy. "Back away, Dalek!"

The metal shell of his arch nemesis rotated to face them and it prepared to take aim.

"Yeah…that's not gonna work," he admitted as the Dalek's weapon powered up for a second shot. He didn't much like it, especially considering the warning, but he stepped forward to protect the others. His song. His song was ending. And sooner than he expected.

The Dalek locked onto him with its mechanical eyestalk… and fired.

Willow jumped ahead of him with her hands held out. "Contego!" she cried out and deflected the deadly ray with her hands. "Refero!" she commanded, sending the beam back at the Dalek where it caught the side of its swivel head and caused a spark.

Willow groaned as she saw the burned skin on the palms of her hands.

The Doctor pulled her away and led them all deeper into the Tripod away from the Dalek. Something wasn't right but he just couldn't think straight. What the hell was that Dalek doing here? How was it even possible? How could one have survived?

They ran until the Doctor found a room and led them in. He closed the hatch and soniced the lock with his screwdriver.

Buffy stopped and caught her breath. "What was that thing?"

"A Dalek. Something not to be trifled with. Are you alright?"

Willow was eyeing her own hands. They were beginning to sting bad. "Yeah I think so."

"I don't know what you did," said the Doc as he looked her injuries over, "but it was pretty much _brilliant_. Still… probably wouldn't try it again though."

"Really not planning on it," she assured him.

"I'm afraid I don't have my socks," he mentioned, tugging his trouser legs up to show her.

Will frowned back at him.

"To tie your hands," he explained. Her frown got worse. "To cover the wounds."

"Oh," she realised. "That's okay." Not having a strange man's socks tied to her raw burned palms was on her list of positives. Then she really did frown when she saw Xander removing his socks. "What are you doing?"

"They're clean," he insisted. "Honest."

Soon she had a pair of permanently stained white cotton socks tied over her palms and knotted at the back of her hands. Why had she gone with sandals today? She went to check on the cow.

Buffy was looking around the room. "Where are we now?"

The Doctor puzzled as he realised where they were. A small circular room at the top of the dome. The corridors, he realised, had been slightly angled the way up here. This new room was old and rusty bronze like the rest of the machine. Seats were dotted about at consoles with tubes and wires going out from them into the ceiling. But where was the crew?

Where was his big evil invading enemy?

"We've reached the command centre," he said with some disappointment.

* * *

( I'd just like to apologise for how long it's taken to add to this story but it's recently grown from being a cute little short story to an epic. Things will happen that I had no idea about when I started… so… here goes…)


	3. The Deadly Chronophase

**BUFFY the VAMPIRE SLAYER**

and the

_**Alien Tripods from Outer Space**_

_The Deadly Chronophase_ / 00**3**

"An artificial gravity-restricted black hole singularity drive. Mmm," the Doctor squinted enthusiastically at the wall screens of the Tripod's command centre. "That's how they're able to time travel. I was tracking a temporal infraction in the TARDIS when I arrived here…" He looked at the closest person for a reaction. It was Willow.

She stared back vacantly. What had he said? Something about black holes and temporal contractions? He was still looking.

"…Cool," she said finally.

"So what's this?" Buffy called from across the room.

They gathered around a small glass box that was built into an alcove in the wall. Pipes and wiring connected out through the wall and into the box where they seemed to be plumbed into… a greeny-brown blob of goop.

It looked like a wobbly jelly.

The Doctor put his stethoscope to the glass and gave it a listen.

Buffy eyed the medical implement and wondered why on earth he'd had it in his jacket. What else was he carrying in that blue suit?

"It's a lifeform." He looked at them all in shock. "These are the Nomads. And these cables and tubes going in… this creature's piloting the Tripod!"

Buffy blinked and looked again at the Jell-O lump. "These are the aliens from outer space?"

"It's a blob," said Xander.

"Looks like Play-Doh," said Will.

Xander reconsidered. "Nah, it's the snotty stuff you throw at the wall. Y'know; it sticks n' then dribbles down to the floor. What _was_ that stuff?"

Buffy prodded at the glass with Mr Pointy. "Earth's being invaded by Flubber."

"You can't stake jelly," the Doctor told her. "At least …I don't think so." He began examining the control centre with all the pipes and wires patched in. It was a slap-dash set-up. "That alien globule there's tied into all the major systems taking on the function of the main computer core," he concluded.

"And what does that mean?" asked the Slayer.

"It means… _that's_ the brain and the Tripod is the body." He looked the room over more rigorously. "But this isn't their technology. Look – seats and cup holders. This Tripod was designed for a Humanoid crew. Mmm…" He wiped debris away from a control screen at a seated work area in the centre of the room. "If the Nomad's hooked into the controls like a brain… then maybe…" He sat down and ran his sonic twinkler across the controls. "Yes!"

Buffy peered over his shoulder. "What are you doing?"

"Reading its mind."

The screen filled up suddenly with alien symbols and writing. Buffy couldn't make sense of it.

"Well, I was half right," he explained. "More than half, actually. They have no home world. It was…ravaged…by the Chronophase virus! …And died billions of years before its time. …Oh, my." He read on quietly, then continued; "These are the last survivors, and up there in orbit, wandering the universe through time and space feeding off other worlds. They really are nomads."

"What's a Chronophase virus?" Willow asked.

"Time, basically," the Doctor sat back in his chair and tucked his screwdriver away. "The great temporal sickness my people came to master. The Doctor and the sickness," he mused.

"I'm still not gettin' the entire gist," said Xander.

"Why do you think life on Earth became mortal?" the Doctor asked like a patronising schoolteacher. "Nearly every galaxy in the universe has the first generation of the Chronophase virus. It's the thing that ages you, and the world, and the sun. But these aliens, they had to go messing around with it, splicing it and cross-breeding it with other viral strains." He pointed to the computer screen. "It got loose and mutated into a super-ageing strain – the second generation. Destroyed almost all of their kind. The ones that remained are carriers, desperately seeking a cure so they can finally settle a new homeworld." He noticed new information appearing on the screen. "Their attempts to alter the virus – to reverse its effect by creating an anti-virus in fact created its opposite – third generation reverse-evolutionary Chronophase!" He pushed his hair back and let out a whistle.

Xander tried to shake off the confusion. "Uh?"

"They found a way to reverse it."

"That's good, then," noted Buffy.

"No, I mean _reverse_ it. Ageing. Backwards."

"Anti-ageing?" sighed an amazed Willow.

Buffy smiled. "Do they do a cream?"

"Believe me, you don't want any of this." The Doctor went back to the computer. "Their species can't reproduce anymore. Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of their offspring would die immediately from it and the remaining point-one percent will be carriers."

Buffy went back to the glass box and bent down for a second look. "So who _are_ these Nomads?"

"They have no name. Not even a language in any conventional sense. They didn't even travel space before the virus. A visiting race landed on their dead world and these carriers escaped. The virus killed the visitor aliens off."

He shot up and walked around, examining a small medical bay. "They stole these Tripods from the cold dead hands of another species." Among the medical equipment he found a collection of syringes and test tubes filled with liquid.

"So," Willow considered, "we're in a Tripod that belonged to a race of aliens who died because of a virus?"

"Basically, yeah."

"And we're not going to die from the virus because…?"

"Oh," he waved his screwdriver about. "These rooms and corridors were flushed clean a long time ago. It's the Nomad who's infected and he's locked away in his box over there." His hand came down and the sonic wave from his screwdriver reacted with one of the glass syringes. It shattered and sent its contents splashing into the Doctor's face.

"Ups." He rubbed the watery substance from his cheek.

Buffy stepped toward him.

"Stay back!" He changed the setting of his driver and scanned the syringes. "Oh, that's not good."

"What isn't?"

"It looks like, before the Visitors died out, they tried to create a cure themselves."

"Did it work?" asked Will.

"No… no. They tried. It didn't work for them. But some of these syringes contain the virus. Chronophase. Third generation." He scanned himself. "My God, I've been inflicted."

Buffy frowned. "Inflicted?"

"You mean _infected_," said Will.

"I'm in the stirst fage."

Xander looked at his bemused friends but they didn't understand any more than him. "The what now?"

"The stirst fage of the virus."

"You mean the first stage?" offered Will.

The crazy Doctor scowled back at her. "That's what I shed. Stirst fage – loss of vocal control. Quick – pass me that hypodeemic nurdle."

The Slayer was lost.

He feigned stabbing himself in the arm with a needle and depressing a plunger.

The syringes! He was pointing to a green one.

He rolled up his sleeve.

Buffy threw him the loaded needle and he promptly injected himself in the arm.

He quickly calmed down and composed himself. After scanning himself again he relaxed. "That was close. The vaccine will inevitably work on some species – not many – but mine, for example. That was lucky. Good old Gallifreyan genetics!"

"Your species?" questioned Buffy. "You're an alien too?"

"Oh, yeah. Didn't I mention it? Let's prey I applied the antidote before I infected any of you. On a human the virus would be foetal in seconds."

"You mean _fatal_," corrected Willow.

"No, I mean foetal," he insisted. "It's a mutated reverse-evolutionary strain. It worked much slower on me because I'm an old man, I know I don't look it, but – AH!"

The girls turned.

Buffy gasped. "Xander's a baby!"

"AH!" screeched Willow.

Sure enough, where Xander had been sitting on the console, was now a year-old infant among a pile of clothes. It started to cry.

The Doctor had to think fast. "Quick! Grab the baby!" He ran for the door with his screwdriver primed.

Buffy piled Xander's clothes around him and picked up the screaming baby bundle, and Willow grabbed the cow.

* * *

Buffy the Vampire Slayer ran through the twisting corridors behind the Doctor with a shrinking wailing baby Xander in her arms. She had no idea what the hell was going on.

She called out ahead; "Where are we going?"

"Engine room!" came his reply.

They reached a junction in the passageway and the Dalek was there, rolling up the aisle toward them. It took aim as they appeared.

"Not that way!" The Doctor turned sharply and headed down a side corridor. "This way. This way."

Buffy followed on his heals and Willow ducked by as a ray beam zapped over her head.

The extermination ray vanished up the corridor harmlessly and the cow trotted by after them.

They ran on behind the mad alien stranger.

"Engine room?" repeated Buffy. "Xander needs a doctor not a mechanic!"

They arrived in a dirty little round room at the base of the dome.

"You're forgetting, …I _am_ a doctor," he answered her. "Not just any doctor–"

"Yeah, I know, _the_ Doctor." She bounced the crying baby in her arms as Willow checked on his condition.

Daisy arrived with a huff of exertion.

"Close the door," he said, tossing Willow his sonic screwdriver. "Lock it tight. Point and shoot." He turned his attention to the machinery of the engine room.

"How are you gonna save him?" appealed Buffy. It wasn't looking good. "He's getting smaller…and bluer."

"I'm going to use the engine's singularity drive to restart Xander's timescale! Simple!" He hoped.

"Wait…" she puzzled, "If the Visitors and the Nomads couldn't do it then how can you?"

He didn't answer. The truth of it was; he wasn't really sure about it himself. But the Doctor was a master of time! If anyone could do it...

"Screwdriver!"

Willow returned from the locked hatch and threw it back to him.

He passed its blue light over a set of controls and slapped a large round button.

Something whirred to life and a huge cylinder at the heart of the room raised up into the ceiling with a gust of air and revealed an astonishing sight.

In the centre of the engine room, drawing in air and dust and rust, was a ball-sized sphere of empty blackness. A dark void with a glowing halo where the light that was drawn in was compacted around the outer edge before being pulled into nothingness.

"An artificial black hole singularity," stated the Doctor.

Willow reflexively moved away from it. "A black hole? …Why aren't we being sucked in?"

"It's gravity-restricted," he answered flatly. "Give me the Xander-baby."

From the look of the squealing newborn there wasn't much time to argue and Buffy handed him over.

The Doctor held the wriggling bundle out and reached into the singularity.

"Whoa!" yelled Willow. "What the hell are you doing? Nothing can escape a black hole!"

He huffed impatiently. "What part of gravity-restricted don't you understand? His mass is too great to be pulled in. He'll just be fired around its event horizon at half a senton shy of the speed of light – right on the brink of infinity – where I can reverse the singularity's gravitational poles and invert his infected chronomatrix back to before the infection." He paused. "Okay?"

They nodded.

"Good." He set back to work. Then stopped. "Are you gonna ask me questions the whole way through?"

Will shook her head.

"Good." He released Xander into the halo of light and he vanished in a whoosh as he shot around the edge of the void faster than any of them could see.

Buffy and Will looked on in complete befuddlement as he hammered controls and waved his twinkler around.

With one last effort of miracle-working, the Time Lord tugged on the release lever and stepped back. A moment later came the flash. Then out fired Xander, the baby, right across the room and into his arms.

With a whirr and clunk, the cylinder shield came down and the black hole was hidden once more.

The girls ran to the Doctor and he pulled back Xander's shirt to reveal what was beneath. "There he is," the Time Lord cooed. "All kick-started and ready to age."

The baby was no longer crying. He was looking up in wonder at the Doc and reaching his uncontrollable little arms out.

"Who's a good little Xander, then?" He went on in daddy talk. "Who is? You are. Yes. Yes."

"He's not dying?" Will clarified.

The Time Lord smiled. "Actually he wasn't dying before. In fact he was this close to never being born. But that's all right, because now he's dying. Just like we all are. He'll grow up, get old, and die. Just like he's meant to. Ageing in the right direction once again." He gave Xander to Willow and approached the controls along the walls. "So, now I have to get you all home so I can deal with this Nomad invasion."

"I'm not going anywhere," stated Buffy. "Will – take Xander back to his place and keep him safe. I'm staying."

The Doctor looked at her severely. "It could be dangerous."

"I'm the Slayer. And I'm human. If it's anyone's job to defend the human race, it's mine."

"From aliens?"

"Well… from anything, I guess."

"Um…" Will waved her child-free hand their way. "How do I explain to Anya that her fiancé's a baby?" She gave little Xander a woeful glance. "Hey… I think he got bigger."

"It's the reverse effect of removing the virus," explained the Doctor. "He'll continue to grow up at an accelerated rate. But he'll stop ageing once he catches up with now," he assured her. "Probably."

She looked up. "Probably?"

"I have to find their particle scrambler and beam you back," he mumbled, searching around the engine room.

"Beam?" asked Buffy, following him. "Like in the show Star Trek?"

"As a matter of fact, funnily enough, Star Trek is _real_. Or it will be. Roddenberry was a Focused Prophet – a seer of one future aspect."

"Get out."

"No, it's true. He was pretty spot-on as well. Picard isn't bald, though. Here!" He found the controls that opened a narrow door to reveal a small dish on the floor. He guided Willow inside and onto the dish.

"Buffy," he said, turning. "Last chance to leave."

She folded her arms. "So, leave."

He grinned and threw a switch.

Will began to ask; "Why am I standing on a di–?" before she could finish, the dish exploded with orange light and zapped her away.

Buffy gasped.

"She's fine," he dismissed casually. "She's back in town… somewhere… around."

He ran to the door with his stethoscope.

"How's the coast?"

"Unclear," he said, shifting the diaphragm around against the hatch. "No, no…that's pretty clear. Clearly blocked." He gave up with the door. "Dalek's on guard." He turned around and almost tripped over the cow. "Lot of use you were, old lazy Daisy."

Buffy practically collapsed into a seat at one of the computers and tried to get her bearings, which, with everything, were pretty scattered. She looked at the dish in the cupboard. "Can we beam back up to the control room?"

He shook his head. "We can only beam _outside_ the Tripod from here. If we try re-integrating somewhere else inside other than on the re-scrambler dish, the metal shell of the dome will create an interference wave and melt us both like candle wax before we're through."

"Oh." Buffy swivelled about in her seat. "So we're stuck in here."

The Doctor put his arm around Daisy's neck. "Don't have a cow. At least we've got fresh milk on tap."

* * *

Minutes passed in the scruffy old engine room and the Doctor was sat on the floor against the central cylinder. His great and boundless mind was busy working on plan formage as the sound of the grinding furnace went on above them. With every second that went by more of the Earth was being eaten up and pulverised.

"The first thing we need to do," he muttered to himself, "is get past that Dalek and stop the Nomad attack on Earth before they strip it bare. The atmosphere will be the last thing to go and then… it's curtains for the human race. Then we need to find a way to talk to them."

"The point of that being?" asked the Slayer.

"They're just trying to survive," he reasoned. "Maybe there's a way we can help them. They have a temporal disease and it _is_ my field, after all."

"Can't you do the same thing you did for Xander?"

"Xander had the reverse strain. It was new to him, fresh. The Nomads carry the fast forward ageing strain and they've lived with it a long time. I kick-started Xander ageing in the right direction. But…the Nomads already _are_ in the right direction."

Buffy Summers looked long and hard into his big brown eyes. So gentle, so fierce, so old and so youthful. And wise. Too wise. She wondered…

"What exactly are you a doctor of?"

He sighed and rolled his head back. "Oh, anything really."

"You said you were a Lord, too. Of what?"

"Time. I'm a Time Lord."

"Really?" He looked serious. "Neat." Then she realised she'd lost track. "That reminds me," she said. "What time is it?"

The Doctor shrugged. "Forgot my watch."

Buffy scratched at her head. She couldn't figure this strange alien man out. So alien, yet so human. Wise, yet silly. A genius clown.

"What do you _do_?" she asked at last.

"I travel and stuff."

"Alone?"

"Yes. Well, no. Well, …mostly. These days."

"But not always?"

"No, not always," he replied with a tinge of sadness. "I've had companions. Friends."

"No one special?"

"Oh, they're all special. But one… yes… there was someone extra-specially special." He still looked sad when he smiled at the memory of her. "Rose Tyler… she was… Anyway…"

She thought of Dawn. Her precious, innocent sister. "You lost her."

From the look on his face she was right.

"I'll see her again," he said. "One last time."

"How can you know that?"

"I know because I've seen it happen from another angle. It's a Time Lord thing. Yeah, I'll see her again. I can take comfort in that…"

She didn't get it but it didn't seem right to ask for an explanation. Buffy decided to let the Rose thing lie.

"You think you'll be able to cure them? The Nomads?"

He mulled it over. "Honestly… I've no idea. We're not talking about any old virus here. We're talking about an infection of _time_. Something that's built into the very fabric of the physical universe."

Something suddenly just occurred to Buffy. "What about a vampire virus? Can you cure that?" she looked to him desperately; pleadingly. "It's Dawn, my sister, she–"

"You didn't cure her already?" he looked up, puzzled, then picked himself off the floor. He looked seriously uneasy.

This worried her. "No… she disappeared. I've heard she was taken by someone calling themselves 'Mister Blood', but I haven't been able to find out who that is."

The Doctor knew. "Buffy, when I said I never heard of our little adventure together I was worried I would alter your path… but it looks like it diverted before I even got here."

"What do you mean?"

He considered keeping his trap shut on the matter of the future but, with things already on the change, the little voice inside that had been his eighth incarnation won through. "After the 'You Only Die Twice' chapter of your chronicles, I read that you located Blade and with his help you put Dawn through a long and agonising viral detox."

"What?" She couldn't believe what she was hearing. "She was cured? I did it? I mean, it can be done?"

She sounded hopeful. It made it harder for him to tell her the facts. "Buffy, It took weeks. For your sister it was like she'd been raped by a monster then put through torture by you. She… she never recovered. It… she… It didn't end well."

Buffy looked frightened now. "What? Tell me what happened."

The Doctor was afraid he'd gone too far to be able to stop now. "She was scarred, Buffy. She couldn't reintegrate. She… hurt herself. It went on in the background of a number of your stories until…"

She waited but he didn't go on. Her eyes began to glaze over. "Until what?"

He knew he was saying too much. "Until…finally… she died, Buffy."

Her eyes welled up. "…How?"

"Suicide." There. He'd gone and done it. He tried to bring some light to the news; "If you haven't cured her as I read then, honestly, perhaps it's for the better. You went through hell with her, Buffy. You couldn't forgive yourself for putting her through the detox and driving her into a self-harming depression. The situation eventually lost you your position with the Watchers' Council. Your life ended with hers. At one point you even told Giles you wished you'd left her as a vampire and ended her life there and then. I know it's harsh now but, somehow, you may have been saved that torment. But if Dawn escaped and is now running free as a vampire… it means everything's changed. It means someone, not me and not these aliens, has altered the timeline."

She looked at him intensely, with sadness, shock and especially surprise. "Who?"

"I don't know." He really didn't, but… "Even if I did, I couldn't tell you. I've said far too much as it is. I'll say no more of it so don't ask." With that he immediately went tight-lipped.

There was so much more she wanted to know. "But-"

"Ah!"

Silence fell in the engine room. It managed to last almost 30 seconds before;

"I'm hungry," moaned the Slayer.

"Here." The Doctor reached into his jacket pocket and threw her something. "Have a banana."

"You just happen to have a banana in your pocket?" She peeled the skin back and tucked in.

"I've always got a banana in my pocket. It's my emergency banana."

Buffy shook her head. He was such a clown.

By the time she'd polished off the banana, the Doc was back running his stethoscope over the main hatch.

"How can time be an infection?" Buffy suddenly asked.

"Well…" he tried to find the best way of explaining. "Space and time are two separate quantifiable states, and then there's spacetime – that's the function of time in its relation to space. Through _this_, time infects all space. And like any good disease, time is fatal. It pushes everything – people, planets, stars, solar systems, entire galaxies – the universe itself… towards death. Because of time, there will be an end to all things." It dawned on him just how depressing that sounded. "But not for a good long while, so chin up, 'ay."

Buffy thought about that for a moment then had to ask what was, to her, the obvious question.

"So… if time's like a disease and it infects physical space …then why can't you change space? Boost its immune system or something. Like regular doctors do with patients using medication. Like you did upstairs. You know – so it can fight those bad strains of time like the one the Nomads have. Or something."

"To manipulate space…?" The Doctor stepped away from the door in thought, shaking his head. "I mean, its very nature…? I'm a Time Lord, not a Space Lord."

Buffy saw the obvious point again. "So who _is_ a Space Lord?"

The Doctor stared right at her with his brow furrowed heavily. Then his eyebrows shot up. "Oh." He flapped about the room. "Oh. Now, there's a thought…" Then he stopped with his hands out to her. "Brilliant. Buffy Summers, you're flippin' brilliant."

"I am? I mean; sure I am."

He shot around the room, picking things up, shaking them at his ear, putting them down. "We need to stop this attack _now_."

She went after him. "Why are the Nomads even here? Why Earth? Why now?"

"Because Earth in this century is weak. Easy prey." He found a rusty old tin cup.

Buffy stopped dead. "Earth's weak?"

"That's right."

She moved away from him slowly, lost in thought.

The Doctor looked up from his new cup to see her drag her mobile phone out. "A cell phone?" he said indignantly. Then realised; "A cell phone!" Then realised; "What're you gonna do with that?"

She dialled. "Call back-up. When you need to talk to the earth… you ask a witch." She put the phone to her ear and waited. "A Wiccan's power comes from nature. I figure… If _we_ have to answer when nature calls… maybe it's time for nature to pick up."

* * *

"RAAAAAaaaaar!"

Willow struggled to piece together the shards of Anya's vase, even with a second identical one over on one of the end tables to use as a guide, because of the toddler that was tearing around the apartment screaming, hollering and bashing into everything in sight.

Anya was purple-faced and on the verge of clawing out her own hair. "Please make him stop! He won't listen to me!" she beseeched.

Will thought she'd matched two edges and picked up the Krazy Glue. "Try finding something to entertain him. He needs a distraction. What usually gets his attention?"

"VRUUUuuuum!"

Little Xander bashed into her as he raced around with his baseball mitt. "I think he's a little young for that," considered Anya.

Will stopped and screwed her face up.

"I'd probably get arrested," she went on. She wondered how long it would be before he reached the age of consent. "How long did that crazy surgeon say this ageing would take?"

"I don't know. He–"

Xander suddenly hit the end table as he flew by and the other vase toppled.

Anya made a noise only dogs could hear.

Willow dropped the glue, put up her hand and held the ornament suspended in mid-fall.

Anya held her head together in relief.

Will let out a sigh herself. That had been close.

Then Xander's baseball landed against her ear and the vase smashed into the carpet.

Willow gripped her ringing, pounding ear hole while Anya screamed and chased the little tyrant.

The witch couldn't help herself. When Xander came running to get his ball, she gave him a pint-sized blast of energy that knocked him three feet back and into the floor.

As soon as she did it, she cringed with regret. She hoped the CPS didn't hear about it.

"Right!" Anya yelled down at him with a wagging finger. "You are being very naughty, Alexander LaVelle Harris. Now go sit in the corner and stop destroying our home!"

"No!" he snapped back from the carpet.

"Do as you're told, little man!" She reached for him.

"No!" He slapped her hand away and scrambled up, running for the bedroom.

Anya went after him. She'd gone way over the boiling point.

"Hey," called Will. "Go easy on him a little. It's not his fault he–" Her phone rang. Willow answered the call. It was Buffy.

"You made it back safely?" said Buffy. "Thank God. Xander…?"

The witch rolled her eyes. "Don't' ask. He's a terror. I'm just glad I didn't know him when he was like this."

"How old is he now?"

"I'd guess…about three. …Is Daisy okay?"

Buffy paused. "Yes, Will, the cow's fine."

Will listened as the Slayer put it to her. She was asking for some earth-shattering witchy magic. Wanted to know if she could use her Wiccan link with nature to put the aliens off Earth's natural resources. "The Doctor says the Earth's weak," Buffy explained. "We need her to fight back."

Willow circled the room; suddenly feeling quite pressured. "I don't know, Buffy. Sounds… big bananas. I've been focusing on the cold magicks. Kinda neglected the natural elements…"

"We're in your hands."

Will didn't like the sound of that. Her hands were burned and wrapped in dirty socks. Yet, she found herself saying; "I'll see what I can do."

A minute later, Willow left Anya babysitting her young demon fiancé, who was now holding onto Anya's leg and kicking her in the shin, and left for her apartment. As she looked back at the sight of them on the steps – Anya looking terrified and Xander with his mop of dark hair – she couldn't help but think of The Omen.

* * *

"What's she got planned?" asked the Doctor, still rummaging through the room.

"Hopefully, something."

"Good. Good. Something's good." He found a pair of three-fingered gloves.

"And now what are you doing?"

"Going back to the command centre. There's work to be done."

"But that big salt n' pepper shaker's still out there, isn't it?"

"Yep, but I've realised something," he said, placing the cup on the floor under the cow. "That big old rusty can out there is just that – a big can. See, a Dalek shouldn't be here working security. And the thing about Daleks is… they never stop banging on. It's all 'exterminate this' and 'obey that' with them." He put on the gloves and knelt by a chilled-out Daisy. "What I suspect is… it's nothing more than a shell – just the armour – remotely operated by the Tripod's defence system. Just another bit of flotsam the Nomads picked up on their travels." The Doctor held the cup in one hand and grabbed a cow nipple in the other. "Now I'm going to test that theory and, I'm sorry Daisy cow, but you're probably not going to make it to market."

* * *

The door opened.

The Dalek entered.

Daisy chewed her grass passively.

The extermination ray went off and the cow turned skeletal for a moment, gave one last moo, and collapsed dead.

The Dalek's eyestalk began to rotate. Another ten degrees and it would find a human female lurking beside the entrance hatch. That is, if it wasn't for the banana skin that landed on it, blocking its vision. It was all the confirmation the Time Lord needed. It wasn't shielded. And any true Dalek in the universe would be screaming 'My vision is impaired' about now.

The Dalek tried to shake off Buffy's banana skin, but the Doctor appeared from the other side of the door with the cup and his screwdriver. As quick as a flash, he sonicked a panel free on the machine's domed head and poured a cupful of fresh milk down the hole.

The Dalek's head sparked.

Buffy saw the Doctor leap out of the way and she took a dive as the salt shaker's head exploded. The Dalek was dust.

"I was right," the Doc said, jumping up. "Just a shell. No real Dalek defences. We must have tripped the automated intruder alarm when we left the vacuum deck."

"You killed Will's cow."

He turned around in surprise. Buffy was standing over the ex-moo. "Nooo… the Dalek drone did that."

"With a little help from you."

"You're right, your right." He put his hands up. "I should have put you out there instead. Then the cow could have gone back to fulfill its destiny as burger meat instead of being Daisy – the brave cow that saved the Earth." He was grinning again.

Now she couldn't help but smile at the jolly mad alien. Though, she wasn't quite sure what she was going to tell Willow.

* * *

On the very edge of town, a single giant Tripod whirred and clanked and billowed great plumes of smoke as it chugged along, devouring the Earth; sucking up the woodlands into its grinding furnace and spitting out fumes of smoggy exhaust in its wake.

A hundred feet off its right flank, a white robed angel drifted through the trees.

Willow Rosenberg stepped barefoot through Miller's Woods, each footfall sinking into soil and leaves, connecting her with nature, each showing her respect for the Wiccan principles and the sacred elements of the natural world.

She stopped her foot half an inch over a broken bottle of beer. Willow sighed. Damn drunks. She side-stepped the shattered glass and headed towards the sound of destruction where the high bronze dome rolled ahead. The cape of her white hooded ritual cloak trailed along the forest floor. They were the ritual robes of Goddess worship, a further sign of respect for the originator of her power source. Her robe front bore the triple moon symbol of the Wiccan Mother Goddess – a full moon between opposing crescent moons, and her rippling cloak with large pentacle – the symbol of the five elements of Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Aether, or Spirit.

The Tripod was moving closer to town.

Willow cast her arms out and stepped forward. "Mother Goddess, conduct me through Gaia to Druantia's throne; the power over the forests of the Earth. With my wounds, gained in defending these lands, I give my blood to thee."

She knelt and reached her bare damaged hands under the soil. She hoped her burns wouldn't get infected.

"With my own Aether I call thee forth; the element of Earth. See as I have seen. See thy weakness at the hands of the destroyers… and turn their desires against them!"

She waited for it… Any second now…

Nothing happened.

She was positive she'd made the right request. There was one other thing she could try. "…Please…"

Still nothing.

_Oh, come on_, she thought. "Gimme a break, huh."

She jumped up suddenly as the ground rumbled beneath her. She raised her soiled hands to the skies.

"I call on the realm of the sky, land and sea;

The realm of the threefold rune.

The Maid, the Mother and the Crone;

Thy waxing, full, and waning moon."

The forest floor quaked and began to crack.

"I call on thee, Earth element of the five-point star.

Mother Goddess, great Gaia, Druantia!"

Willow bent her head to the soil and whispered to the Earth.

"Now hear this faithful Wicca's hymns…

…And withdraw thy forest's tethered limbs!"

Willow leapt back as the cracks opened up and spread toward the Tripod. The trees were swaying! Huge redwoods that were at first gently rocking then tugging viciously.

It was working! The young witch looked on in amazement. It was really working!

The Tripod stopped and seemed to analyse the woods as the trees danced around it. What it didn't see were the hundreds of deep-seated roots in the dirt beneath it. They were moving. Pulling away from under it until the soil caved in.

Willow dared to move closer in time to see the alien machine sinking into the earth. In seconds it was gone.

She was still in awe of what she'd achieved when she realised there was no time to waste. There were two more of those things on the loose in town. One in the centre and one at the beach. She had to move fast. She began to scan the forest floor.

For the past few months she'd been trying to master levitation as a means of rapid travel, since the teleportation was proving too painful and dangerous. But she wasn't having much more luck with that either. Floating objects was no problem, so long as it wasn't too big. A TV was fine, but a car was too much. She could still make it rock, though. The real problem came when she tried to levitate herself. It just wasn't happening. The vending machine she and Tara had first moved together was something she could now move easily on her own. She could even levitate it while sat on it. Or levitate another person. But herself – there was just no joy.

But right now, she needed to get to the beach, and fast. She was looking for something – anything – she could use for a ride. If she couldn't levitate herself, then she'd hitch on something that was easy to shift. She'd learned from experience why early witches had used simple broomsticks as a training device – like stabilisers. Just something lightweight until they got a handle on self-flight. That was long before a witch on a broom became a clichéd stereotype. Trouble was, the best thing she could see nearby at that particular time was a long thick tree branch with a clump of leafy foliage at one end.

"No way." She wasn't about to ride anything that close to cliché.

So she tried desperately – standing with her arms out, rising up on her tiptoes – to take off…

Not a sausage. Nothing.

She looked again at the branch.

She could only imagine what Tara would have to say about it. "I'll never live this down."

All she needed now was a hairy wart and a pointy hat.

* * *

The ocean waved and rippled as the Tripod waded towards land, drinking up gallons of water and sea life with every second without fear, as nothing could stand in its way. The Earth military would soon send their missiles and aircraft… and the orbiting guard would easily shoot them down. Minimum energy wastage, maximum consumption. The planet would be stripped in days. It was inevitable. They never failed.

Willow came in fast, throwing the branch aside and landing barefoot in the sand. The beach began to part for her and the water too as she headed into the sea.

"Mother Goddess, conduct me through Oceanus to Aegaeon's throne, the power over the storm waters. With my wounds, gained in defending these seas, I give my blood to thee."

Will reached into the sea. At least the saltwater would clean her burns.

"With my own Aether I call thee forth; the element of Water. See as I see; the Demon machine that draws thy depths to their destruction… and defend thyself!"

Something bubbled far beneath the ocean.

"I call to the realm of the sky, land and sea;

The realm of the sacred rune.

Oh Goddess, in thy threefold form,

In the guise of the Triple Moon."

The waves began to rise and fall in the distance.

"Vast element of Water; to thee I call upon.

Mother Goddess, Oceanus, great Aegaeon!"

She bent with her palms against the surface film of the water and whispered to the ocean.

"Swell thy tides to shrink their size…

…And drink the beast to a swift demise!"

A massive tidal wave rose up behind the Tripod and pulled away from the shore, dragging the machine out to where the land fell away, wrapping it up in a fierce whirlpool and pulling it down to the depths.

Willow retreated back as the tide returned to the shore with a splash.

When the waters settled, there was no sign of the alien Tripod.

She took a moment to catch her breath, then turned toward town. She wasn't sure how to handle the Tripod there. Not without destroying homes or shops and stuff.

It soon became clear she wouldn't need to do anything.

The ocean bubbled and churned, then exploded as the alien wrecking machine lifted up like a space shuttle on a tower of flame.

From Miller's Woods, the first Tripod rocketed up from behind the tree line, shedding dirt behind it. Seconds later, the third rose up into the sky. The Tripods were retreating.

* * *

The Doctor and the Slayer arrived in the control room once again just as they felt a shudder rattle through the dome.

Buffy caught herself. "Whoa! What was that!"

"She's done it!" he spun around in amazement. "Ha! Good old Wonder Wiccan!"

"They're leaving?"

He looked into her eyes. "_We're_ leaving."

* * *

The tails of fire that propelled the rocketing Tripods died out as they reached 34'000 feet. Their long jointed legs folded in half and drew up at right-angles to their central domes and began to rotate. Soon, they were spinning at such a rate the three legs blurred into the distinct shape of a flying saucer. The three saucers continued to rise through Earth's atmosphere.

"Feel that?" asked the Doc.

Buffy sensed some kind of motion beneath her feet but couldn't place it.

"We're spinning," he said. "Fast."

"Why?"

"The Tripod's creating a gravity field inside the dome."

"Because?"

He looked at her with wide-eyed excitement. "We're going into space."

* * *

An F-16 Fighting Falcon out of Hammer Field, Fresno, soured across the skies of Sunnydale like a lightening bolt. She was EAGLE-19 with the 144th Fighter Wing of the California Air National Guard. Her pilot banked the jet fighter around and aimed his nose toward the pillars of smoke rising out of the small town.

He took the warplane though the rising contrails and peered up through his bubble canopy. High above he saw them. The flying saucers.

"Fresno Base, this is Eagle One-Niner. I have a positive visual confirmation on three unidentified craft accelerating beyond maximum safe altitude. Fifty-thousand feet and climbing, over." Almost to himself he muttered; "Looks like they're retreating."

"Eagle One-Niner, Fresno Base. Confirm: bandits are departing."

There was no sign of more on land below and the three overhead were getting smaller by the second.

"Fresno Base, Eagle One-Niner. Bandits are withdrawing, repeat, the enemy is withdrawing, over."

"Copy, Eagle One-Niner. Continue dry for a second pass. Re-confirm and bugout."

"Wilco, Base. Stand by."

He arced the jet around in a wide U-turn and brought her back through the dispersing smoke trails. He looked up, searching for the saucers. They were so tiny. He figured they must be well into the mesosphere. At least 85 km from the earth.

"They're definitely heading into space," he noted to himself.

"Copy that," came the reply on his radio. "Fresno out."

That was that, he thought.

EAGLE-19 swung north-east and headed home.

* * *

"I'm _not_ going into space!" the Slayer insisted.

"Yeah, look," The Doc pointed to a screen, "it says so right here."

The bleeps and lines and dots made no earthly sense to her. "No... I mean: I am _not_ going into space." She sounded fairly adamant if a little afraid. "I-I-I…" She remembered the transporter dish with great relief. "Beam me back."

But the Doctor dashed her hopes. "Out of range."

She circled the room, struggling to breathe. "Out of range? What the hell? …How are we meant to get back to Earth? More to the point – how am _I_ meant to get back to Earth?"

"Duh, Escape pod of course." He tapped a second screen showing an image of the Tripod exterior shell with a cylinder extension attached to the belly of the dome below the engine room.

She didn't like the look of the little escape can. If it was anything like the rest of this bucket, it hardly seemed space-worthy. "I'm not a space man… I mean…astronaut. I can't be going into space. I haven't even had any training. This can't be happening."

The Doctor's glasses were back on as he played around with the control centre. "Yes, well it is. Now, we need to get them away from Earth. Drive them as far away as possible… and cripple them until I can figure this out."

He worked the controls with nimble fingers. If he could bypass the Nomad's brain circuits and send them to the future and somehow lock out their singularity drive, or shut it down, preventing further time travel and steal their lifeboat to get back to Earth, the beach, and the TARDIS and follow after them and then, just for fun, save the day… that would be pretty brilliant.

"We're going to the escape pod now, right?" urged Buffy.

"God." The Doctor scrunched his face up as he eyed her through his specs. "Big old Slayer. Not afraid of a Demon nest but scared of a little space." He went back to work. "It's just space. Y'know; a bit of room. Frightened of a bit of room."

She didn't get the chance to answer back.

Just as the Doctor finished setting the artificial black hole singularity to implode after the next time-jump, and before he had chance to set a timer for the jump itself… the Tripod's power drained for a moment as the engine room ate up the juice.

The lights returned.

"Was that you?" asked Buffy. She really hoped so.

"It's the Nomads," he replied. "They're aggravating temporons."

"They're what?"

"Temporons. Nomads. They're aggravating them." He tried to counteract the commands to buy them time to get to the pod.

"Right now I think _I'm_ the one being aggravated," said Buffy. "By _you_. What the hell are you talking about?"

"Time travel! My, you _are_ brutally rude, aren't you?" He shot up and ran to a wall terminal. "By aggravating temporons they vibrate the very threads of time. Threads are shaken loose – become slack – allowing the Tripods to slip through the gaps between the threads."

"You're making this up," she told him. "You're opening the hole in your face and letting any old crap fly out."

"I am not. Well, …" His controls went dead. Every control and every screen on the command deck went dead. The Nomad had locked him out. It was just too hard-wired into the system to beat.

It was too late. They were moving and his wrench was already in the workings. The time engine was set to implode.

He grabbed Buffy by the hand. "We have to go."

They ran. Out the command centre, through the spiralling corridors to the engine room, down a hatch and metal ladders into a tight maintenance crawl space that led to a tiny compartment at the base of the dome. In this compartment they found the small round hatch where the lifeboat was docked.

The Doctor grabbed the turn-handle and saw through the porthole…

Buffy didn't like the look on his face.

"Um… ah," he said. "We may have a problem. It seems… there's no escape pod."

"What?" Her heart went cold in her chest. "You said there was an escape pod."

"Actually I said we'd use one… not that there actually was one."

"That's just great." She held her head and tried to move but there was nowhere to go. "Well done, Doctor _Whoops_." She knelt by the hatch and tried to stay calm and think straight. "And we definitely can't beam back down?"

"Not unless you plan on beaming into space."

"So what do we do now?"

The Doctor, for the first time, looked seriously concerned. Worried even. Scared. He just looked at her with blank eyes.

There came a deep rumble. Out the porthole a rainbow of energy exploded around the Tripod. The Doctor slammed his hands against the glass.

They were leaving the Earth behind – leaving the twenty-first century behind.

Leaving the TARDIS behind!

"The TARDIS!" he cried out as the fleet of saucers were sucked through time.

"NOooooo…!"


	4. Lost In Space

**BUFFY the VAMPIRE SLAYER**

and the

**_Alien Tripods from Outer Space_ **

* * *

_Lost In Space _/ 00**4**

Space. So barren. So empty. So cold and so silent…

Somewhere out in the far reaches of that deep and fathomless realm of outer space, half a dozen flying saucers erupted from the time vortex as they fled the wrath of the Earth. Not the weak easy prey they had expected, but a vengeful living planet!

The central domes of the saucers were no longer rumbling with the sound of grinding crushing machinery. They were almost silent but for the low hum of the furnaces burning away. In the belly of one, a pair of humanoid stowaways climbed up out of a crawl space and onto the main deck.

The Doctor paced quietly around the Tripod engine room. It wasn't a peaceful quiet. It was a tense one.

Buffy watched him from a distance.

All the computer interface terminals were now shut down. Cut off, and without power. It all seemed so lifeless to her.

She observed with pursed lips as the blue-suited man pulled sections of panelling from the workstations to access the inner circuits and wiring. He leaned in and almost disappeared. She heard his laser stick humming on and off for the minute and a half he was under there.

She was cold. Not because it was cold. The room was quite warm with the furnace above.

It was fear. Nerves. Where was Earth?

She wanted to ask.

Were they lost in space like Will Robinson and fam? She shivered, but kept quiet. She checked her hands. They were shaking.

The Doctor dragged himself up out of the electrics with rage in his eyes. He spun and threw his screwdriver against the control desk.

Buffy thought he looked like a wild animal caught for the first time in a cage.

"I've got to get back," he mumbled and paced. "Got to get back to Earth. Back to two-thousand and three."

If he didn't know how to get them home, if he had no plan… Buffy didn't know how the hell she was going to get out of this mess. "You said you were a Time Lord," she ventured. "_Take_ us back."

"I can't."

"This thing travels through time, right?"

"Not exactly. Not anymore." He was speaking hard and fast. "In order to hold them in one place I had to collapse the artificial singularity–"

"Look. No more space-talk. Just… tell me why. Like a normal person."

He stopped and took a breath. _Yes_, he told himself, _why not explain to her why she's God-only-knows when and where_. "The time engine thing… I smashed it."

"Oh…great. Good job."

"Thanks. It worked quite well. Proper smashed." He put his hand on the cylinder where the black hole had once been. "Hopefully I did enough to at least influence the arrival point."

"But the others still have the time engine?" said Buffy. "We can use the dish and take another Tripod." She ignored the fact that power to the dish was out.

"Knock out one black hole it knocks them all out," he explained. "It's a multiple-entry black hole science thing."

She looked at him sideways. He was off with his technobabble again. "Okay, I'll regret this, but… how does that work, then?"

"That black hole was the same black hole used on all six Tripods. Like a wormhole – or a corridor – with six doors opening onto it. I closed the doors and the walls fell in. The corridor's lost."

And there was the regret. Because it actually made sense, and it wasn't good. "So how _do_ we get back? And where are we anyway?"

"A long way from where we were," he replied, scanning the room. "From the look of these things they're only built for short-range flight. Without the black hole drive… we won't get anywhere close to Earth in them. Anyway, all the controls are locked out. I interfered and the Nomad cut me off. It's tied right into the system. There's nothing I can do to override it. This Tripod might not even work anymore without the Nomad as its brain."

He went quiet again and Buffy rubbed at her face.

Part of the engineering controls lit up with a low thrum.

They spun around. The teleport terminal!

The dish exploded with orange light and a figure appeared.

The Doctor jumped back. It was a Cyberman! And his sonic screwdriver was over on the controls right next to it.

"What's that?" demanded the Slayer, as the armoured space-knight clocked her and moved in.

"It's a Cyberman," he said. But it wasn't offering to delete them. "Or a Cyber drone. The defence guard from another Tripod."

She couldn't tell if it was a robot or a man but it was almost on top of her. "That a yay or nay on the slay?"

He waved her towards it. "Slay away. But don't let it touch you!"

She danced around the thing as it came for her. "Dare I ask why?"

"About three-thousand volts at two-hundred milliamps."

Fair enough.

She circled around the central cylinder to where the Doctor had found his strange three-fingered glove. There she found herself a pair. They were thick engineering gloves with rubber-like pads. She imagined they looked pretty electric-proof and put them on, sliding her middle two fingers into the same sleeve. She moved around the other side of the cylinder and stepped between the Cyberman and the Doctor.

"Be careful," warned the Time Lord. "They can be deadly if you– "

Buffy attacked and took the outstretched hands of the metal zombie in her own and locked her fingers. Twisting, she brought their arms down and tried to bend the thing's wrists backwards. She could hear energy discharging from the arms holding her, but felt no shock from it. That was lucky.

The Doc's eyebrows went in opposite directions. "Are you playing 'Peanuts' with a Cyberman?"

"I bet he says Uncle first," she replied. Then the Cyberman seemed to get wise to the game and began to push back. "Ow. Ow. Ow. Fingers."

The Doc slipped behind the robot and retrieved his screwdriver. "Do I hear an 'Uncle' coming on?"

She wasn't pleased and kicked the manbot in the chest, sending it reeling back with its arms still in her grip.

The armless drone stumbled along until the Doctor caught it. With his sonic screwdriver, he made an attempt at disrupting the signal from the other Tripod to its cyber brain – or whatever device they were using as a brain.

Buffy tried to shake the Cyber arms off her hands but the fingers were locked.

The Doctor sonicked away. It was beginning to work when the Cyber drone, in a desperate last effort, transmitted all its bodily energy into a single electrical discharge that fired out of its chest plate and across the engine room.

The lightening bolt cracked into Buffy and slammed her into the wall. She hit the floor smoking and didn't move.

The Doctor's mouth fell open at the sight. Then he recognised the overload signal the discharge had caused in the Cyber drone. He ducked away as its head exploded into pieces and the body keeled over and hit the deck.

He turned over to see their attacker motionless on the floor, its neck smoking like something out of an old cheap sci-fi movie. He looked to Buffy. She too was motionless and smouldering.

He scrambled up and ran over to her, patting her down to stop any potential fire and rolled her onto her back.

He wondered if there was any chance of recovering her at that point when her eyes suddenly popped open and fixed on him.

"Jeez," she croaked. "I feel like a fried weener."

The Doc let out a loud "Ha!" She was alive. He couldn't believe it. He'd heard of people surviving up to 340'000 volts in Earth's history but also dying of as little as 32.

"You're amazing," he squeaked finally.

"I'm the Slayer," she said, pushing herself up. "Superhuman privileges."

He helped her back on her feet. Her eyes were bloodshot, her clothes were steaming and her hair was a little puffy, but on the whole she was doing well to say she'd been severely deleted.

"Are you sure you're all right?"

She nodded and gave a pained smile.

The Doctor whirled around and got back to business. They still had power to the dish. "I'll have to cripple their fleet somehow so no more uninvited guests can pop in." What he really needed was for the Tripod saucers to be stuck right here for a long while so he could sort things out.

He'd barely set to it when he hissed at what he saw on the transporter display.

Buffy waddled over and tried to see what was happening. The screen was alien.

"It says our Nomad's just been beamed to another Tripod," he explained.

"I'm guessing that's a bad sign."

"Unless them blowing us out of the stars is a good thing, then yes. Very bad."

Buffy had no strength left in her to moan or feel fear. She sighed and managed a weak shrug.

The Doctor paced frantically with his hand to his head, mumbling incoherently about inversions and waves and scramblers. "EMP," he said. "EMP. EMP. But no electromagnetic devices! Damn, damn, damn. Think, think." He stopped. "Sonic waves conducted as a pulse in the electromagnetic frequency range! Ultrasonics acting as an EMP! Yes!" He stopped again. "But, but… need something that can sustain an ultrasonic charge and convert it to energy… something susceptible to ultrasonic disintegration…" He stopped again. "Glass!"

Buffy could only stare at him.

The Doctor looked around waving his sparkler. "No, no, no," he moaned. "No glass. Even the screens are a plastic alloy." He looked at Buffy and she could see. He didn't know what to do again.

The first day she'd really been out of the house since… since Dawn was turned… and this is her reward. "All I wanted was a nice quiet day on the beach," she grumbled tiredly.

The Time Lord wheeled about and grabbed her by the shoulders with a spark in his eye. "The beach!" he cried. The sand in his left trainer!

Back in the apartment he hadn't dared clean his other shoe out with Anya leering at him.

Buffy watched as he removed his sneaker and peered inside. He smiled and his tongue danced across his teeth. "Sand," he whispered. "…Quartz silica. …Glass."

"What are you gonna do with it?" she asked. He seemed far too excited about the glass.

"Ever heard of an explosively pumped flux compression generator?"

"Not really."

"Well, it creates an EMP by compressing magnetic flux using high explosives, accelerating objects to extreme velocities, and compressing things to very high pressures and densities. I can do something similar to this glass with sonics and Time Lord wizardry."

"That's really great." She sounded less than enthused.

"It will be if it works." He checked the display again. "One of the Tripods is bringing its cannons online." There wasn't a lot of time. He ran to the beam cupboard, emptied his shoe out on the dish and closed the door, then set about adapting the control panel for his screwdriver.

"Buffy – Go to the replomat back there and see if you can generate us some non-perishable foods. It won't work after I do this so make as much as you can. …There's no telling how long we'll be drifting around out here."

She waddled off, assuming he meant some kind of Star Trek replicator system. She didn't care so much. Her brain was a boiled egg.

* * *

When she returned with a bunch of stuff wrapped in an oily sheet, the Doctor was tying metal plates to the soles of his sneakers with his shoelaces.

"Quick," he said, "do the same. These magnetic plates will act as mag-boots."

She didn't know what he was babbling about but she did what he said. He seemed to have everything in hand.

The Doc's screwdriver was plugged into the working console. "Just need to charge the quartz in the sand with an ultrasonic frequency from my screwdriver…" He bashed a button and checked the screens. The cannons were charged and online and locking onto them. "…And beam it to the other ships…" He flipped the switch.

Buffy heard the whine of the transporter.

"Initiating pulse," said the Doctor as he hit the button one more time.

* * *

Out there, on the five alien saucers, tiny beads of sand materialised and, like magnifying glass, transmitted a sonic pulse that vibrated through their electrical systems, eroding wires and fusing circuits. Within seconds their power was gone.

Unfortunately, as the Doctor knew, there was still sand in his trainer, and around the dish and all around the floor of the engine room. There simply hadn't been any time to do anything about that.

The first Buffy knew of it was when the lighting went out, plunging them into darkness. Then she felt her body try to leave the floor. The top of her feet stopped when they hit the ceiling of her shoes. The magnetic plates were doing their job. Her mind started to clear now that things were getting real.

The entire dome was now in absolute and total silence. It left a hum in her ears.

She heard the Doctor fumbling around for a few seconds, then a small overhead light came on. She looked up to see him floating on the ceiling with his sonic sparkler plugged into the light mechanism and his shoelaces hanging loose off his feet.

"I can run this light on the screwdriver's power cell for a few hours," he said, trying to straighten out.

"Are we dead in the water?" asked Buffy, with a little life back in her voice.

"Yes. There was no other way. I'm sorry. I'm afraid this means we've got no life support either. But there's enough air in here to last us a few days I expect." He shoved himself to the floor and tied his shoes back to the plates. "It'll get cold in here, though. And quickly."

Buffy dragged her heavy feet to a chair and made an effort to sit down. It didn't work. "How many levels of worse can there _be_ in the universe?" she grumbled.

"At least you made us dinner," he said cheerily. "What culinary delights do we have in store? I'm famished."

What food did she end up with? Buffy reached into the sack of weightless packages and pulled one out.

He read the label and cringed. "Dungwead snot? Ugh." He shook his head.

She let the packet fly away and took out the next thing.

"Balazord skin flakes?" he quickly put a fist to his mouth to keep from vomiting. He composed himself and waved it away.

She released the packet into the air and lifted out a box.

The Doctor groaned loudly. "Oh, you're rubbish. You're not in charge of meals ever again and that's a fact. Didn't you manage to make anything _edible_?"

"Hey, the screen was all in stupid fuzzy hieroglyphs," she argued. "I didn't know what any of it was." She reached in for one more item. "The only thing I got out of it that looks remotely edible was this thing." Buffy waved a big floppy carrot thing at him.

He pulled a face like none she'd ever seen. "I'm not even prepared to tell you what that is, but it isn't touching _my_ lips." He crossed his legs reflexively with a pained expression.

"Oh," she realised and let the thing go right away.

"So much for dinner," said the Doc.

* * *

Buffy was shivering with cold and half-asleep, with no sense of how much time had passed, when a loud clang sounded from beneath their feet. She looked to the Doctor and mouthed the words 'What was that?'

"I wouldn't want to jump the gun," he said, "but it sounded like a shuttle craft docking."

"Who could that be at this time?" she joked.

He laughed and wondered the same. "A rescue party?" _But_… "…That was quick."

"What if it's the space police?" she asked, stiffening up. "I've got no I.D. I don't even have my passport."

"I have this," he answered, pulling a wallet from his inner jacket pocket.

"What is it?"

"Psychic paper. Well, slightly. It says whatever I think." He showed her the white sheet inside.

"It's blank."

"Look again."

She did. And now it appeared she was trapped on a dead flying saucer in outer space with John Smith; President of the United States of America, and psychiatrist to the rich and famous. "Wow, let me see."

He handed her the wallet.

"Huh?" Buffy frowned and shook it. She showed him the paper. "It's gone blank again."

He saw what appeared on it and gasped. "Ooh, you dirty… give me that." He snatched the wallet from her. "Come on, let's go say hello." He slipped out of his magnetised shoes, pulled his screwdriver from the ceiling light, and propelled himself toward the floor hatch.

Buffy slid out of her own grounded shoes and floated after him in the dark. She couldn't begin to imagine who they were going to find down there. This Doctor fella was either totally reckless or brave to the point of insanity.

* * *

A faint fiery light, like that of sunlight at dusk, rose up through the docking hatch at the base of the flying saucer. There was no lifeboat there, but something else had taken its place.

Buffy saw the Doctor's face in the deep orange glow as they waited. She wasn't sure what they were waiting for but the man looked… she wasn't sure of that either. Excited? Intrigued?

He turned and smiled at her.

The hatch slid open beneath them and the Doctor turned to find a heat-ray blaster in his face.

Hanging off the handle-end of the gun was a stocky chap with a scruffy beard.

"Who," the man said, aiming at Buffy. "What," he said, aiming back at the Doc, "and why?"

The Time Lord went cross-eyed as he saw the barrel of the weapon on the end of his nose. "I was hoping for 'We come in peace,'" he said.

A petite young brunette floated up behind the man in the hatch. Buffy noticed their matching uniforms – his a military green sci-fi jacket and pants, hers in salmon pink.

The bearded man let his finger off the trigger. "If that's how we're received, then that's how we come, my friend."

"Then we receive you in peace," beamed the Doctor.

The chubby man tucked his weapon away. "Chuffed to meet you both. We tried to transmat you out but there's too much ultrasonic interference. Haven't seen readings like that in an age."

"Well, I'm the Doctor and I am _very_ chuffed to meet _you_," he said with genuine relief.

Buffy was surprised to see they not only looked, but sounded like normal humans. They were looking to her expectantly. "Buffy Summers," she offered. "Equally…uh…chuffered."

"Chuffed," said the Doctor.

"Chuffed?" she asked.

"Right," he said. "Chuffered? That's not even a word. In any time."

"Fine," said Buffy.

"Lovely," said the Doctor.

The man waited until it was clear they were done. "Krik Steeplechin," he said and offered a salute. "I'll be your taxi pilot for today."

The Doctor saluted back enthusiastically and Buffy copied. She wondered what kind of name was 'Krik Dimplechin'.

"This little minx is Liliaeth Cyberwulf," the man continued. "Medic First Class."

"Anyone hurt?" she asked.

They shook their heads.

"Well, come on then," said Krik. "You'll catch your death in here."

Inside the small shuttlecraft, lit by a single orange bulb, the two hitchhikers found warmth and gravity again. Buffy thought the craft looked like something from Star Wars – old and used.

They were soon off across open space and the stars and black outside the windshield quickly clouded into a deep red mist.

Fog in space?

"Where are we?" asked Buffy.

"Out in the Bare Barrens of the Demon Nebula," Krik answered.

She looked blankly to the Doctor.

"About thirty-thousand light years from California," he told her.

That didn't sound particularly promising.

"California?" said the female medic. "That's only three-thousand lights away on Hollywood Prime."

"Oh, not New California-Two," the Doc explained. "_Old_ California. Well, old-old-old California." He turned and whispered to Buffy, "You're a long way from home."

"Cringe," she replied, and pouted.

Beep beep went the shuttle dash.

"There's the beacon," announced medic Liliaeth.

"Following her in." said Krik, using the beacon signal like a lighthouse.

Outside in the running lights of the shuttle, the thick red fog suddenly darkened until a great metal wall appeared just a couple of metres ahead.

To the Doctor, it looked like a big ship or a station of some sort.

"Lill, open docking clamps. I'm swinging us around."

"Aye, Skipper."

* * *

They docked with a bump and a whoosh of air as Lill opened the hatch. Krik stayed behind to put the shuttle to sleep as they scaled the ladders with their bare feet and disembarked.

Lill led them through a hatch into the docking bay area, a sparse and dirty metallic room, greasy and leaking steam and moisture from a number of pipelines running through and up the walls.

A large round door, thick and tough-looking, split in half and separated. Behind that, an iris-like division circled open and an armed team marched in.

They were cornered by three grey-clad men and a fourth guy, mean and rugged with a scarred chin and bottom lip, wearing one of their sci-fi uniforms in a dark shade of grey-blue.

The rugged man with the buzz-cut and scar spoke up with authority; "Dragonelf Thunderblain, station's Second. And you are?"

The Doctor gave a gush of admiration. "Thunderblain? That's a good old tenth-phase Highland name! The name of a warrior clan, isn't it?"

"It is. And I honour that warrior spirit with every action I take," he warned, one hand resting on his heat-ray.

"Good," said the Doc with a wary nod. "That's…that's… very good. So you should. Um. When exactly _is_ this?"

"When?" echoed Lill. "Then that _was_ a time vortex you came out of?"

Thunderblain cut in firmly; "I must ask that you state your name and affiliation."

The Doctor flashed his psychic ID and medic Lill peered at it.

"Time Agent in charge of temporal anti-terrorism," she read out.

He said of Buffy: "And this is my… apprentice. Actually she's on work experience."

Buffy frowned. The scar-faced boss man looked her over.

"Time Agents?" he said. "We've had a few of those show up before from the five-thousands."

"First one was a tall dark stranger," said Lill. "Kinda crazy. I think he might have been bi."

That sounded like a certain Jack Harkness, but from a time before he took that name.

"Oh, I think I trained him," the Doctor lied. "Handsome chappy speaking Americano. Twinkle in his eye. Holds a gun like a girl."

"That's the fellow," answered Thunderblain.

"Flirts with anything that breathes," added the Doctor.

Lill swooned: "That's definitely the guy."

Buffy tugged at his sleeve. "What does this mean?"

"It means an old friend was here," he said quietly. "Only, before I knew him."

"And that means?"

"…Nothing. Well, other than they're familiar with Time Agents." He turned his attention back to the future people. "So, when are we?" the Doctor asked again.

Lill replied; "It's the fiftieth of June on the second year of the third phase of the ninth sun of Triton."

The Doctor worked it out on his fingers. "Ninety-one twenty-one? That's not too bad. The Earth's still there. It's a little earlier than I'd have liked, mind you."

At least, he thought, if Earth was still there, maybe his TARDIS was too.

Thunderblain gave orders to his security team, sending most of them back to other duties.

In the meantime, Buffy whispered to the Doc; "Why is it too early?"

"They don't have space gates yet. Or wormhole drives," he whispered back.

"Is that good or bad?"

"It means there's no quick way to Earth from here. Imagine a road trip to all 60 American States. Only…on _foot_."

"Fifty."

"What?"

"Fifty States."

The Doc puzzled it over. "Oh. Right. Year two-thousand and three."

"We're getting ten more States? When does that hap–?"

"I'm…going to change the subject now." He addressed the station crew; "What exactly is this? A space station? A fuel port? A shipping centre?"

"All that and more," replied Krik Steeplechin as he rejoined them from the shuttle.

Thunderblain began to lead the group from the docking bay and through a cold metal corridor.

Krik went on; "If you have a cargo run, this is the place you take a break. If you're lost, this is where you find your way."

"More than anything," Lill continued, "this is a place of sanctuary."

Krik guided them out into a massive open area with a glass ceiling that opened up to an image of a summer sky where fantasy clouds drifted overhead. There were market stalls, trees, a lake and a small park, all woven together by the metal plated floor of the station deck. The area was like some naturalistic, albeit artificial, airport lounge. There were hundreds of people walking, shopping, eating and even children playing in the park.

The Doctor was smiling at the joy of it all. Buffy was agape.

Krik Steeplechin put out his hands. "Welcome to Angel City."

"Remarkable," said the Time Lord after a moment. "A floating city in a red nebula." He quickly got over the novelty of it. "This's all fine and dandy but… what we really need is to get to Earth. Pronto and sharpish."

"And shoes," added the Slayer under her breath, wiggling her naked toes.

"Oh, yes," said the Doctor, "and some shoes."

"I'll get onto that," said Lill, and toddled off down a corridor.

"What about all those saucer ships out there?" Krik said to his rugged leader. "Must be half a dozen of 'em. We should bring 'em into the garage and fix 'em up?"

"Oh, I'd leave them well alone if I were you," the Doctor advised.

"Why?" asked Krik. "Perhaps they can be repaired."

"You know the plight of Ventus-Nine?"

"Of course," replied the portly pilot.

"They were responsible," said the Doc in a secretive tone.

Thunderblain snapped up, body tense and rigid. "If that is so, then we should take them into custody at once."

"You can't," insisted the Doctor. "They're contaminated with a deadly virus. Quarantine protocols apply to all six ships."

"Then they should be destroyed," decided the tough scarred warrior.

"I can't allow that."

"On whose authority?" demanded Thunderblain.

"Hers."

Buffy saw his finger pointing in her direction. "Mine?"

"Hers?" Thunderblain repeated suspiciously.

The Doc turned to her so she would notice his next words clearly. "She's with the PDC."

"The…PDC?" she muttered.

He reached behind and secretly handed her his psychic wallet. "Yes. The Planet for Disease Control. Where you're their senior bio-analyst."

She concentrated on that lie and pretended to remove the wallet from her jeans pocket.

The Angel City team leaned in and looked over her ID, before leaning back, satisfied she was who her companion claimed her to be.

All but Krik, who read the smaller print and rubbed his rough beard. "Why is the colour of your underwear relevant?"

She groaned at herself for not having better mental control. She couldn't think of any excuse other than the one she was already experiencing. "That's the future for ya. It gets _weird_."

Krik nodded. "I can see that happening." He pulled out his own civilian card. "We even have to tell them our religious and political affiliations these days." On the card he was just as rotund but with more hair and about ten years or so younger. "And those rectal bobbles really can tell if you're lying."

"Bobbles?" Buffy repeated with a frown.

"Probes," muttered the Doctor.

Buffy squirmed, a suddenly undesirable taste in her mouth.

Lill returned with 2 pairs of uniform boots.

Thunderblain saw fit to grill the blonde girl further. "You're with the PDC, yet you're a trainee Time Agent?"

_Oh, great. Thanks, Doc_… "Yes…apparently." She tied on her boots. They were almost a good fit. "I'm juggling two jobs. Money's tight. Got bills to pay."

Lill sighed. "I hear that."

Another man showed up. An older guy with a firm build, maybe in his fifties, with a horseshoe of dark silver hair and a curly grey moustache. He wore a brown version of their uniform.

"Who's this?" he asked in a deep gruff tone.

"Time Agents," said Liliaeth "This is Buffy…"

"Summers."

"Buffy Summers. And the Doctor."

"Doctor _whom_?" he asked.

The Doctor blinked. "That's a first."

"Don't worry about Vandermart," said Lill, "he's a retro."

"Vandermart Grinagain, Chief of the Armoury," said the old chap with a short lazy salute. He moved closer to Thunderblain. "Second, the relief vessel _Golden Moon_ failed to depart on schedule."

"Another one?" his scar twisted as his face soured over. "The way things are going we'll have to start _giving_ ships away." He gave it some thought and said; "Bring the No Claims Clause into effect, Chief."

"Sir?" The old man frowned.

"It _is_ Station policy, isn't it? Any property within or attached to Angel City unclaimed for time exceeding twenty-four hours becomes subject to Management discretion." He looked about at the busy station – full of people. "We need to clear docking space. If they're overdue, give them away."

Vandermart replied; "Second, there are two ships already twenty-four hours overdue."

"Ahem." The Doctor drew their attention. "I don't suppose they're deep space sleepers?"

"Well, Yes," answered the old Chief.

Thunderblain narrowed his mean eyes at the Doctor. "You're willing to take one off our hands?"

"I rather am."

Thunderblain snapped his fingers and a young docking technician approached. "Has the General returned yet?"

"He's due in any second now, sir."

Thunderblain turned to the older officer. "Vandermart – look into the whereabouts of the Golden Moon's commander and inform the General as soon as he reports in. Also, inform him we have a quarantine situation with a group of vessels outside the Nebula."

"Aye, Second."

The old curly-tash headed off again and Thunderblain explained to the Time Agents; "We've got two ships in dock capable of automated stasis flight that seem to have become available. I believe one's a heavy machinery freighter and the other's running cattle. The cattle-driver just made its drop and was heading home, and the machinery hauler's got a few outstanding items onboard. The equipment's no good to us so they're forfeit with the ship."

"We'll take the machinery hauler," said the Doc, turning to Buffy. "I'm not a fan of cattle poo."

The Second spun to the young technician again. "Show them to the ship," he ordered before he, Krik and Liliaeth made their way to the command level.

* * *

It wasn't long before a pair of scruffy docking Techs were leading them back along the ring of the port bay.

The younger Tech was short, noted Buffy. Even shorter than her. And the other was tall – much taller than her time-skipping companion.

"You all right?" asked the Doctor as they walked. "You seem to be handling all this rather well for a Californian."

"I was just thinking," Buffy replied dreamily, and quietly. "If flying saucers are real… and these truth-detecting anal-probing bobbles that Dimplechin was talking about… Does that mean future people, and not aliens, are actually visiting Earth? My Earth?"

"Well, I'm a future alien and I've visited a few times." She looked up at him. "Though I don't have a flying saucer. Not anymore. …And I've never probed anyone's bum. Honestly."

They stopped when they came to the port where their vessel awaited.

"It's not much but it should get you where you're going," said the short Tech. "Earth, wasn't it?"

"That's the place," said the Time Lord.

Buffy was pretty sure that 30'000 light-years was quite a long way. "And how long will that take exactly?"

The Doctor's face curled up at the question. He was hoping she wouldn't ask.

The short Tech considered. "With two five-thousand series megallon drives…and only a level one subspace paddle?" He turned to his taller mate. "What would you say?"

The tall Tech shrugged. "…Three and a half years?"

"Sounds about right," agreed the short one.

For a second there, Buffy struggled to make words. "Three? And a half? _Years_?"

"Hey, relax," said the tall one. "It's no worries. It's fully automated with a dozen sleepers."

Shorty nodded. "Yeah, relax. What's the worst that can happen?"

"It's an old ship," a grizzled old mechanic said in the background. "Their nav-com could give out and fly them into a sun."

"And on that note," said the short Tech, "…bon voyage."

"Thank you," beamed the Doc.

"Don't thank us," replied the tall one. "Thank Captain Anglebloc. He's the one gone n' vanished."

Buffy had other concerns. "Do you have any food or coffee or something for the trip? I'm dying here and three years is a long time to go hungry."

The short Tech waved her away. "Oh, that's all taken care of intravenously in sleep. You'll be supplemented with liquid nutrients and enzymes during flight."

She stared back at him. "…Sounds delish."

Another mechanic came striding by. "Hey, I just heard from the upper levels. Looks like we've got another vanishing."

"That's the third one this cycle," Shorty called after him. "Who is it?"

The mechanic continued on down the corridor. "Brigadier Steamcleaner failed to report to the Golden Moon this morning. There's no sign of him anywhere," and then he was gone round the corner.

The Doctor watched after him. Three missing captains and three abandoned ships? He was certainly intrigued. But he had no time to wonder about it. They had places to be and much to do.

And then, as he turned back the way they'd walked, he saw a sight that shocked the hairs of his body into needles and sent a cold sharp shiver down his spine.

A docking technician passed by them wheeling a trolley.

Tied to the trolley with chain was a solid stone statue.

The statue's face was hidden behind open hands, like a crying child. Its wings tucked tightly behind its back.

A feeling shot through him. It was a sensation he rarely ever had, and one he even more rarely heeded.

The Doctor saw the Weeping Angel and suddenly wanted to get the heck out of dodge.

The short Tech saw his expression as the statue rolled by them. "Yeah, that." He groaned. "Angel City. Someone thought it was cool to have these angel statues in the docking lounge but now they're shipping them out. Too damn ugly."

The Doc turned to Buffy with a face more grave than any she'd seen. "It's time to go."

"Not about to argue with that," said Buffy. She'd had enough of this place. Home was all she wanted.

The Doctor practically manhandled her through the docking seal. They were barely through when he punched the red mushroom switch that controlled the door.

"Hail the leader of the Luminarian Guard!" came a rousing cry from across the corridor. It sounded like someone important had arrived.

Buffy turned and, as the iris closed, she saw a sight of her own that sent a shock through her.

As their door to the docking seal closed, another opened opposite them and Buffy saw a tall dark officer in a deep maroon uniform. A number of people moved in on him, handing him reports.

Her mouth dropped loosely and a whisper left her lips. "Angel?"

Then the iris was closed and the thick heavy doors snapped shut.


	5. Ghost Ship

**BUFFY the VAMPIRE SLAYER**

and the

**_Alien Tripods from Outer Space_ **

_Ghost Ship _/ 00**5**

The impression Buffy got was that it was a big space ship. Passing through corridors that seemed to run for miles, the Doctor led the way to the control room. It was little more than a dark cupboard. There, he set about checking all the screens in the room.

Buffy had other things on her mind. "Did you see…? I mean… there was a guy back there in a kinda dark red uniform as the door closed. Looked like he just arrived."

"What? Oh, I don't know. They said their General was due in."

"General?" she muttered to herself. "…Angel?"

The Doctor was moving around the room twiddling knobs. "Who? Angel? …Angel? …You mean _Angel_? _Your_ Angel? …That's highly unlikely."

"Maybe…"

"It's Angel City," he reasoned. "You saw the angel statue, you had 'angel' in your subconscious when you saw a man that looked a little bit like him."

"Yeah… I guess. It's seven thousand years or so. …Probably just a future Doppelganger."

"Or one of the Slitheen that's wearing his skin as a suit." He stopped. Glanced up. She looked appalled. "No, no it's probably not that either." He quickly checked one more screen and appeared to be satisfied. "Well, everything seems to be tickety-boo in here."

Buffy was starting to feel tired and she still wasn't sure what was going on. "Can I ask you something?"

"Single," he said. "But I'm not actually on the market right now. I'm very flattered though. Not that there's anything wrong with you. You're… sort of handsome. In your own way–"

"That wasn't the question."

"Oh."

"Do you have a plan? Or…anything that remotely resembles one? Or are we just heading to Earth on the hope that your time travel machine is still there? Because if it's not I still need to get back to _my_ time."

"And you will," he assured her, picking up a 3D display device no bigger than a pocket novel. "I always have a plan. Even if I don't know what it is sometimes."

Buffy tried to puzzle some meaning out of that last part.

"Come on," rallied the Doctor. "Sleepers are this way."

* * *

Buffy followed the kooky doctor down one of those long endless corridors. They had to watch their step as the floor was laid with metal planks and, occasionally, a plank was missing. It was hard to see how far the drop was. The ship was fairly clean, but messy, with pipes and cables running everywhere.

When they reached a door marked **Stasis Room**, the Doctor turned the locking bar and pushed the heavy door inward. It was a cold sterile white room with a tiled floor like a walk-in shower room. There was a central bench and lockers beyond which stood a row of twelve vertical fish tanks. It had a distinctly clinical feel.

The Doc ran a quick check of the tall tubular tanks and pressed the exterior switches on two of them. The glass doors swung open.

Buffy had the sudden feeling she didn't want to get in one of those tanks. All this technology and space stuff… it didn't seem real.

"Ready for this?" he asked her.

"Sure," she lied.

"I just need to get you in here and wire you up."

"Wire me up?" That didn't sound too pleasant. Looking inside, she saw lots of piping and wires and a mechanical unit at the back.

"It's only a few wires to monitor your bio readings, a feeding tube and air. It's all there to keep you alive."

She leaned into the tank and looked around it some more, finally turning back with a sigh. "So I just get in?"

He didn't reply at first.

"There's something I need to tell you, Buffy." The Doctor's cheeks were turning rosey as he scratched at the back of his head. "Now, …in order to go into suspension… You'll… have to… …removeallyourclothes."

"What?"

"It's…It's the inorganic materials… they cause problems for the equipment of this era. Inorganic actualisation wasn't perfected until the early one-hundred and first century."

"You are kidding."

"Not really."

"No, you are."

"I'm really not."

"Oh, no, you are."

"Well then," the Doctor said in resignation. "I suppose it's going to be a long trip for you. There won't be any life support or gravity anywhere other than in these tanks. Three and a half years cooped up in a glass tube no bigger than a coffin…" He let it hang there.

She remembered waking up in her own coffin. Dark. Alone. Buried. Three years in there would have driven her completely bonkers.

The Doctor watched her patiently.

Her face was fierce. She was not a happy flyer. "Cover your eyes."

He looked away as Buffy stripped off and stomped into the tank, positioning her back against the rubbery padded machine inside.

She had her legs crossed and one hand placed strategically over her delicate spot and an arm laying across her chest when the Doctor appeared at the opening with a handkerchief tied over his eyes.

With one hand he felt around behind her for a length of wire with a sucker-pad attached. The other hand drifted in front of her and he planted it in her face. "Ah, there you are." His hand moved down her face and sheepishly began feeling its way down her neck, over her collar bone and–

"Whoa!" She yelped and slapped his wandering hand. "For god's sake take off the blindfold! I'd rather be ogled than groped."

"I'd rather do neither but this is necessary if you hope to have a stable trip." He removed the hanky and took out his spectacles to see what he was doing. They were halfway on when he saw Buffy's expression. "Right," he agreed, and slipped them back in his pocket. As quickly as he could, he applied the wired suction pads to her feet, calves, thighs, stomach, shoulder blades and neck. He handed her the more delicately placed ones and told her where to stick them, then, with a hot sting, he put a hollow catheter needle in her left forearm, strapped it down and hooked the intravenous feeding lineonto it. He reached around her to set up the mechanical unit.

"I swear," she told him, "if you're joking about this, I'm gonna shove a bobble up your butt."

"You're a strange girl."

"And you're a complete wacko."

"You're _rude_."

"You're perverse."

"You're ready," he said.

He pushed a mask over her face and quite painfully forced a set of tight straps over her head.

She moaned, and resisted the urge to pop him one on the chin. When he was done, she found herself wearing a full-face clear glass mask with a rubber seal that ran across her hairline, down behind her ears and under her chin with an air pipe right at the bottom under her jaw. Elastic straps held it in place, stretched tight behind her head. The pipe led into the humming unit behind her.

"All done."The Doctor backed out into the room. He tapped a button and the door to her tank swung shut, hissed, and stood closed. He looked her in the eyes. They were big and shining behind her transparent headgear. Standing in the tank naked, protecting her dignity with both hands, she looked as vulnerable as a Slayer could. She was shivering, he noticed, and perhaps it wasn't all down to the cold.

_You'll be okay_, he mouthed through the door.

She watched him for a moment, then gave him a nod. Then he disappeared to connect himself into the next sleeper. It was some relief when she saw his suit flying across the room and landing on the bench. At least she hadn't been pranked.

She finished sticking the last of the wires to her body and saw the door to the tank beside hers close. She suddenly wondered if they would really be unaware of the entire journey.

"Hello!"

Buffy jumped at the clear sound of the Doctor's voice in her ear, and let out a surprised yelp.

He apologised and explained that their breather masks were fitted with communicators. "All right in there?" he asked.

"Oh yeah," she answered sarcastically. "Apart from the feeling I'm in a freak peep show."

"I do hope you don't talk in your sleep," said the Doctor. "Though, I should warn you, I've woke myself up singing a few times."

_Ugh_. Three and a half years with the mad Doc in her ear… "Knock me out already."

Their radios crackled.

"Hello, hello," came the familiar voice of Krik Steeplechin. "This is Angel City departure control calling the _Wyvern's Belch_. We read two sleepers online and comm channels open. Anyone on the ears over there?"

"Wyvern's Belch?" puzzled the Doctor. "That must be us. This is the Doctor and Buffy Summers! We're all aboard, ship-shape and Bristol fashion!"

"Roger, Doctor. Steeplechin here. We've remotely programmed your flight path to Earth Prime in the Terran Sol star system and we are ready to initialise your departure and suspension tanks."

"Ah, marvellous. Ready when you are, Angel City."

"You're clear to depart, Doctor. We're pushing you off now."

Buffy heard a loud clank somewhere high up and far away.

"That's just the docking release," the Doctor whispered in her ear. "We should sing a good old-fashioned sailing song."

"At some point, Doctor, I may have to slay you."

"Ha-ha!"

Out of the blue they heard the voice of Medic Liliaeth in the background of the Angel City control centre; "You made it!"

There was a pause. She spoke again, closer to the microphone; "I mean… you'll make it. I bet."

"…Thanks," the Doctor acknowledged with a hint of puzzlement.

"Is she okay?" whispered Buffy.

"Travel well, Doctor and Buffy Summers," offered Krik.

"Be safe your journey," Lill said.

"Angel City, over and out."

The line crackled and went silent.

"Doc?"

"Mmm?"

"Those guys…are peculiar."

"Mmm…"

Buffy was surprised again when all the lights outside her glass tank went out. A faint glow rose up inside, light from a strip over her door. And then she leapt up again when she felt the cold wet thing under her feet. She resisted the need to panic as the bottom of the tank started filling with watery slime. "Doctor?"

"Just relax," his voice echoed in a calming tone. "Stay loose and breathe steadily. You have your oxygen mask on so it won't hurt you. It's perfectly normal. Just let it wash up over you and it'll soon feel fine. It's quite comfy once you get used to it."

The thick liquid, slightly green in colour, rose up to her neck. It seemed to caress her body warmly and tightly and as it neared her face mask she tried to pull away from it. What if the mask wasn't tight enough? What if it filled with fluid?

And then it was over her, rising, until the tank was full.

She floated, weightless in the watery gel, and found she could breathe just fine.

A long time passed with the humming of the tank behind her and the black of the ship outside her tall window. She felt exposed and alone. A small trapped speck in a vast wilderness.

At some point she realised that she could no longer move in the liquid. Or, she considered, she just couldn't be bothered to. She felt tired again. Finally, she relaxed completely.

"Three and a half years…" she said at length.

"It'll be like nothing at all," the Doctor reassured her. "We'll be there before you know it and you won't be a minute older than you are now."

He said something else but she didn't catch it as her brain clouded over and a soft white blanket of sleep came and smothered her.

All became fluffy and tingly and bright.

* * *

Dawn…

Dead. Vampire. Blade. Cure. Sister. Alive. Home. …Suicide.

Angel…

Tall. Strong. General. Space station. Busy. People. …Danger.

That statue…

Stone. Hard. Cold. Sad. Weeping. Hiding. Waiting. …Screaming. Biting. Taking.

Space…

Black. Eternal. Frozen. Alone. Drifting.

_Someone… Anyone…_

_Help…_

* * *

Buffy felt the distant memory of a dream gradually drifting away from her as her eyes fluttered open.

Her vision was strange. Her skin felt wrong.

She was under water! _I'm drowning!_

Buffy jumped, but only succeeded in sending ripples through the water.

_Am I still breathing? _She was wearing a face mask with a glass front.

For a moment she froze, suspended like a mermaid, as sleepy synapses fired up in her brain.

_Of course!_ She remembered where she was.

And right away she had a bad feeling. Lights (she couldn't tell what colour through the green tint of the goop she was floating in) were flashing in the room outside. She could see the door to the tank beside hers – the Doctor's tank – was open.

She recalled the 2-way radio in her ear. "Doctor?"

Silence. She hit the side of her head where the speaker was. "Hey, Doc, you there?"

It looked like he really was out of his tank.

Buffy felt well-rested, full of spark and fire and energy. And impatience.

She scanned the contained tube and saw, above her head on the ceiling of the tank, one of the big mushroom emergency buttons. From the dark greeny shade of it she guessed it was red.

Buffy swam up, stretching some of the wires stuck to her body, disturbed to remember that she was buck-naked in an open-view tank, and punched the kill switch.

Immediately the tank began to empty, ejecting the fluid out through the floor grill.

The moment her head was clear she tore the mask away, took a deep breath, and almost collapsed.

Her head spun and she choked, falling below the surface of the water. There was no air!

She lurched when the goop enveloped her dizzy head and she pushed herself back up onto her feet, falling against the side of the tank for support. She desperately needed to gasp for air but knew she couldn't. Her heart was slamming as she dragged the face mask back over her head, praying, and took a massive breath.

Sweet, vital oxygen filled her lungs and relief calmed her pounding heart. She straightened herself up as the tank finished emptying. The door swung open for her and a sharp cold rolled in from the ship.

Buffy ripped all the sensor pads off her skin and tore the IV feeding drip from her arm. She tried to step out and was stopped by the air pipe, still connected from her mask to the supply unit at the rear of the tank. She looked around inside for some kind of solution and found what looked like an air cylinder with a connection at the top the same as the one that joined her air tube to the sleeper unit. It was a small cylinder, about the size of a coffee flask and with a similar handle. It was marked up **O2**. Reaching around the sleeper unit, and taking a deep breath, she twisted the connection, freeing her pipe. Air rushed out of the unit for a moment and she quickly tried to connect up to the portable cylinder. It worked. She just hoped there was plenty of air in the small bottle.

Holding her nude self, shaking with cold, and covered in a jelly-like substance, Buffy left the tank and stood barefoot on the icy tiled floor, looking around for any sign of that infernal Doctor. He was nowhere to be seen. Rotating lights hung from the ceiling silently flashing, spinning orange and red.

The gel that covered her was like KY. She looked at her hands, surprised to find her fingers weren't even wrinkled. It occurred to her that, if anyone should happen upon her in her present state, they would likely think she was acting out some kind of sexual fetish.

She opened a locker and found towels. With one she rubbed off most of the gloop and threw another around herself. She was still too messy for her clothes, not that they'd be much help in this cold, but she pulled the boots on and wandered out into the vast ship.

The space ship was cold and empty, her muscles weak and stiff at first.

The hazard lights were spinning everywhere as she moved through the corridors. She followed what looked like scuff marks in the layer of frost that covered the floor, hoping the Doctor had made them. Everywhere was silent, except for the humming in her own ears and the dull tap of her boots on the metalwork.

She stopped when she reached the next corridor. The far end was unlit – completely in darkness – and the marks on the floor had ended. There was no frost in this area to show them up.

She looked again down the long dark tunnel and her bad feeling grew more intense. She thought of horror films, and how she would be screaming at the TV: _Don't go down there, you idiot!_

And then she heard the sound of feet bounding through the black void toward her.

A shadow came out of the darkness.

Something was there… Someone…

It was the Doctor. He was in his blue suit, his rooster hair was flat and dishevelled, and he wore no mask. He was surprised to see her. "You're out!" he said as he approached.

She was standing shivering in the corridor, one hand holding the towel that was wrapped around her, the other hanging onto her portable air tank. "Yeah, I'm out. I woke up with no idea what the hell was going on. I almost choked to death. And I'm _freezing_!"

"It'll take a while for the heating to crank up," he explained. "We should get you cleaned off and into something warmer."

"Why are we awake already? Feels like we just went under."

"Buffy… we were in suspension for almost three years."

She was speechless. Had it really been that long?

He asked; "Why are you still wearing the breather?"

"Like I said – choking. There was no air in the tank."

"The life support came on with the alert. Soon as your sleeper opened you were fine."

"I didn't know that," she pointed out, annoyed. "And what alert?" She pulled the mask off and turned the oxygen valve.

"We've had an impact alert. Cargo Pod Ten was sealed off. Something hit us, Buffy. Something hit us very hard and came right through the wall."

"What can we do? Are we in trouble?"

"The ship is fine – the bay was cut off when it happened. But I need to get in there and see what hit us. If possible I need to repair the outer wall or put up a temporary seal."

"Then let's get to it."

He smiled. "That's more like it. We _will_ need the breathers in there, though. And thermal suits. The gravity's still on but all the air went out of through the rupture."

Buffy's eyes narrowed. The Doc looked uneasy. "What aren't you telling me?"

He nodded. Sometimes he forgot she was a warrior, and not his usual breed of companion.

"There's something alive in Cargo Pod Ten," he breathed. "And it's trying to shut down our engines."


	6. The Thing In Cargo Pod Ten

**BUFFY the VAMPIRE SLAYER**

and the

**_Alien Tripods from Outer Space_ **

* * *

_The Thing In Cargo Pod Ten _/ 00**6**

They were standing in a vacuum-sealed intersection between four doors. Buffy and the Doctor, in silver thermal suits that covered their entire bodies and the breather masks from the stasis tanks. The air canisters were fitted into sleeves that hung from utility belts at their waists. The Doctor also had his sonic wand hanging from his belt and each of them carried a heavy hand-held spotlight.

Of the four doors, the one in front of them led to Cargo Pod Ten.

Something was in there. Something living. They didn't know what, but they knew it was trying to sabotage their journey to Earth. Buffy wasn't entirely sure what the full ramifications were if they lost the engines on this big old spaceship, but she knew if they couldn't make Earth and find this Doctor's time machine…

She couldn't imagine not getting home. She could barely accept just how far from there she was.

She eyed the small flask-sized air tank hanging by her thigh. "How long will this air last?"

"A few hours," replied the Doctor.

His voice echoed as it first came through her mask speaker, then across the hall and through her glass face plate.

"The radios in these breathers only have a range of a few metres," he told her. "Fifty or sixty at best." She nodded back at him. Her eyes were still large and wide, like a stunned kitten. He set his hand on the door lever. "Ready?"

With all the confusing weirdness lately, she couldn't even remember what it felt like to be ready. The big lamp in her hand weighed at least half a ton. She switched it on and sighed. "Sure."

"Brace yourself. There might be a draft."

The door ahead raised up and a gush of air rushed out by them. It dragged them forward a couple of feet and stopped.

They were inside the pod, which was masked in the deepest darkest of shadow – space blackness – and there sat an eerie kind of silence. It was absolute.

They scanned around with their torches and moved cautiously deeper into the hold. Their footfalls on the grille of the floor were soundless in the vacuum. There was nothing other than the sound of their own, and each other's, breathing. And, when they held that, only the constant hum of their inner ears in the quiet.

As they eased forward nothing appeared ahead of their lights, nothing but the floor grille, even when it seemed they'd moved at least twenty feet in.

"How big is this place?" asked Buffy.

"It's a big ship," said the Doctor. "Small living space, small control room, only eight pods to each side of the hull for hauling machinery. I'm guessing… rather big indeed." He stopped.

Buffy looked to the end of his torch beam and saw a steely metal wall. Its surface was deep cold and frosted with white. His light found a barely legible yellow sign printed on the wall under the layer of cold. A large circle with bold lettering:

WARNING. OUTER HULL.

"Well, that's the _back_ wall." The Doc moved a little to their left and shone his light on a small mesh cage around a computery wall panel. "And there's the side wall. That should give us some bearing." He turned to the right and listened reflexively. If their mysterious visitor wasn't working at this maintenance terminal, there had to be one at the other end of the cargo pod. Along with a main control computer. The Time Lord passed his spotlight to Buffy, who groaned under the weight, and he approached the cage with his sonic screwdriver. He used it to unlock the cage door and stepped in, waving it at the buttons there.

"What're you doing?" she asked him.

"Just a little sabotage of my own. Don't want anything using this when our backs are turned." He rejoined her, took his torch, and led her the other way.

* * *

They must have travelled only thirty feet or so when Buffy froze. A feeling came over her suddenly and she just knew there was something beside her in the dark. The Doctor, to her right, was still moving forward. She turned her lamp gradually and aimed it to the left.

She jumped back and immediately felt foolish. It was a tyre. A giant Buffy-height wheel. Against the outer wall she'd found two massive vehicles clamped to the deck. One had eight giant wheels and a long body – very boxy and flat – with some kind of drilling arm on the roof. The other was much higher but not as long. Four enormous wheels and a domed top. She had no clue what that one could be but both had the look of construction about them. They probably had _JCB_ stamped on them somewhere.

"Buffy…"

She turned ahead and moved around the vehicles. The Doctor was at the outer wall and his torch shone over a huge rusty section of a giant dome that protruded through a great tear in the hull with thick girder-like beams that stretched out from it and dug into the floor grille.

Buffy recognised the rusty colour of the metal, and the legs that reached out of the dome. Now that those legs weren't spinning it bore little resemblance to a flying saucer.

A small hatch-like door was open on the curved surface of the dirty metal dome.

"A Nomad tripod," uttered the Doctor. "They must have got this one working and sent it after us."

Three years of running and they still had to worry about those space blobs? "What if the rest of those tripod ships are out there?" said Buffy.

"No… no, if they'd managed to get their fleet fully operational they would have shot us down. This one hasn't even got its cannons working. That's why it rammed us. It's trying to disable us until the others can get here. It probably sent our location to them right before it hit us."

"Why did it even bother coming after us?"

"They must think we're trying to harm them after what we did."

"What _you_ did."

The Doc peeked inside the small opening. "They're obviously holding a grudge."

"So what came out of that hatch?"

He looked back at her. His foil-wrapped body didn't move but his eyes shrugged back.

"What do you need to do?" she asked him, scanning around for signs of company.

"I'm going to try to access the diagnostic computer for this section. It should be at the other side of the pod. You could look around for our guest. But be careful."

"Right."

"And Buffy… I said careful, not careless."

"I got it."

He moved off and Buffy kept him in her beam until he was deep enough into the darkness that her light didn't reach him.

* * *

The Doctor walked for what felt like a mile before he found the end of the pod but, on closer inspection, he realised it was just a thin partition. He swung the torch around. To his right was the inner wall and a metal ladder. He climbed up onto a walkway that led through a gap in the partition. From what he could make out, the walkway ran the length of the pod at least 30 feet above the deck. The ceiling looked to be another 30 feet above that. If the partition was at the halfway marker… The pods must be enormous.

He followed the walkway to the very end of the cargo container and descended the ladder there. Just as he'd hoped, he found the main computer access terminal for the pod. It was also caged and appeared untouched. As he checked to the sides, he did find a number of wall sections had been ripped away exposing the inner piping and wiring.

Something had been here.

He spun around with his light and wished he could listen for movement, but the vacuum was soundless.

The Doctor soniced the cage lock, pressing the tip against the metal to give the vibrations something to pass through, and set about accessing the computer. It was a voice-actuated system and he patched it directly into his own radio.

'_Computer…interface…ready_,' acknowledged the calm robotic female voice.

"Situation report."

'_Hull…breach…in…Cargo…Pod…Ten. Section…twenty…three_.'

"Yes, yes. Is the ship still operational?"

'_Negative. Structural…integrity…weakened. Breach…must…be…sealed._'

Great. Maybe he could work around that little problem. "Run a scan for intruders."

The small screen on the terminal began to run numbers and symbols as the computer worked his request. Suddenly the scan stopped and the female voice returned:

'_Explosive…device…detected._'

The Doctor stiffened up. "Where?"

'_Cargo…Pod…Ten. Section…seven…teen._'

"Section seventeen? What's in section seventeen?" he muttered to himself. He dragged the 3D mapper – the one he'd found in the control room 3 years ago – from his thermal suit breast pocket and brought up a schematic of that area. It showed command cables running along the walls at that section. A big enough boom would destroy their automated systems. No computer control, no navigation, no sleepers, no go.

'_Un…registered…lifeform…detected…in…section…seven…teen._'

Unregistered? It had to be one of those Nomads!

'_Human…presence…detected…in…section…seven…teen_.'

"Buffy!" The Doctor's hearts began to pound. "The explosive – how long before it goes off?"

'_Detonation…in…T…minus…thirty…eight…seconds_.'

38 seconds…

His genius mind ran the odds quickly. 50-60 metres to make comm range… a cargo pod the size of a small galaxy…

The Doctor leapt up and ran.

* * *

The Slayer drifted between the row of shadowy vehicles and machinery, testing every aisle with her gigantic flashlight.

Nothing… nothing… nothing…

She was almost back to the side wall. She aimed her torch between the two vehicles she'd first seen. Her light traced the thick armoured bodywork, the hydraulic piping, the huge tyres, all the way to the front–

Her beam caught something as it disappeared behind the vehicle and she jumped back.

She stopped, remembering why she loved to hate horror films. Had she? Yes. She'd definitely seen something pass by. She began to creep slowly along the big truck with the roof-mounted drill, trying not to make a… She shook her head. _Vacuum, dummy._

She sped up, passing the open slide door of the truck – inside was more machinery – and headed to the front of the cab.

* * *

High on the narrow walkway, the Doctor rushed through the gap in the partition. He'd dropped the heavy lamp and was running blind as hard as he could.

"Computer, do we have lights in here?" he gasped.

'_Lighting…circuits…damaged_.'

"Bypass the circuit! Get the power from somewhere! Do it now!"

* * *

Buffy poked her glass-encased head out from behind the cab of the driller to see only blackness. She told herself to count to three, give the area a blast of the torch for just a split second, take it all in, and duck back again.

She prepared herself, knowing damn well the moment she turned the torch out there, some demonic drooling beast would appear right in front of her face.

"Okay. One… Two…"

Her eyes exploded as the entire ceiling lit up and night became day.

She squinted, seeing a massive warehouse-like storage facility, silver-grey, with painted bays and lines and signs all around. Metal ladders and a high walkway. Rows and rows of heavy-duty all-terrain construction vehicles and demolition rigs and God knew what else.

Buffy shooed away the surprising sight and looked out from behind the truck.

There was a square section of the side wall opened up and something shining in the light – something humanoid – was reaching in. It moved back from the wall and turned around.

Her eyes narrowed as she recognised the body of the Cyberman, but now it was different. It had, welded to its chest, the Dalek death ray, and something new had replaced its head. In a square glass tank bolted onto the robot's shoulders, in some kind of fluid, hung a jelly blob Nomad wired into the Cyber Drone.

* * *

The lighting initiated as the Doctor was halfway between the partition and the far wall. He saw the Cyber Drone, the Nomad attached, and the extermination ray. He saw Buffy appear from between two vehicles – right into its path. He ran harder than he ever thought possible.

The moment he heard her heavy breathing in his ear, the Doctor cried out. "Buffyyy! Get out of there!"

She whirled around trying to find him and spotted the tiny Doctor high on the walkway. He was racing and waving frantically.

"Get out! Get out!"

It was abundantly clear from his tone and ferocity that something very bad was about to happen. Something big. She turned on her heels, threw down the torch and ran for cover inside the nearest vehicle.

The Time Lord skidded to stop when the Nomad turned its chest his way and aimed the extermination ray directly at him. Before he could catch up with his forward momentum, the weapon fired and he tried to refocus the energy into a backward dive.

A huge chunk of the walkway blew apart as the Doctor hit the deck.

He coughed, winded, and looked down through the grille. It was aiming again. And it wasn't an extermination ray anymore. It was something worse. And the Doctor couldn't get up…

A silent orange flash went off as the Nomad's bomb exploded in the wall.

Buffy was in the drill truck, door closed, on the floor when the blast wave rocked the vehicle. One of the equipment cases toppled and almost crushed her back. She pushed it off and checked for tears in her suit. Then she noticed that the case, which was nearly big enough to be a coffin, had snapped open in the fall. She frowned as she laid it out on its side and opened it up. What she saw inside she at first took to be some kind of weapon. Then she remembered all the machinery and tools – the demolition stuff. And, what really gave it away, when she raised the huge missile-launcher-type device in both hands and looked it over, was the huge red print on the side.

BOSCH.

It was a power tool. Some kind of future jackhammer. She reached in to grab the handle, which was encased in a protective guard and the thing lit up in her hands. It was big, alright, and heavy. But it still weighed less than the torch. On the side, the battery indicator was at full power, which meant batteries had certainly improved since her time, and a dial on top had 3 settings. She scanned over the user guide on the inner lid of the case.

**Setting 1: Sonic Pulse** _(For the moving of rumble and debris. __**CAUTION:**__ Will harm humans, small animals, and some aliens)_.

**Setting 2: Laser Cutter**, which was pretty self-evident even to Buffy. (_**CAUTION:**__ May cause loss of limbs)_. Something to remember.

And **Setting 3: Impact Blaster**_ (For small-scale demolition works. __**CAUTION:**__ Highly Explosive results may occur. Do not use when inside the structure to be demolished)._

The Slayer grinned and turned the dial to setting 3.

* * *

The explosion had shaken the walkway, but the Doctor was relieved to see the blast had been contained around the wall area, and luckily it wasn't an outer wall. Not that their luck would have been much worse if it had been. He needed to get down there and see how much damage the Nomad had done.

He picked himself up and jumped across the damaged section of walkway and made his way to the far ladder.

* * *

Buffy strode out from between the vehicles with her new super jackhammer in both hands. The wall was ripped apart and now sound had invaded the pod as air, or some other gas, erupted from the piping and spilled out all around them. Tiny specks of debris and dust drifted in this new air. She looked from the exploded wall and saw the Nomad dragging its damaged self over to the back wall behind the ladder. As she reached it, it managed to sit up against the wall. She wondered if it could see her. She aimed the power tool at the creature and her brain was already trying to come up with an appropriate finishing pun. Then again, it might still not hear her in this mostly airless storage bay.

"No point wasting a good pun on deaf ears. Or whatever you have. I just hope you can understand that you messed with the wrong Barbarella."

"Don't kill it!" came the Doctor's desperate and angry voice. He jumped down from the ladder and blocked her view of the Nomad.

She couldn't understand him. The thing had tried to blow them out of the stars and exterminate them and even succeeded in frying her hair to a crisp, which really made her mad. "Doctor – stand back!"

"Wait!"

"Get out of the way, Doctor!"

"_Wait_!"

She'd never heard him so forceful.

He turned to the Nomad, even though its chest ray might still function, and held out his arms. "I'm not trying to harm you, I was never trying to harm you! Don't you understand that? I'm not your enemy!"

Buffy lowered her blaster. He was willing to risk his life just to talk? To avoid a fight?

"Do you hear me?" he continued, trying to find some kind of communication system on the head tank. "I want to help. I'm going to do everything in my power to help you." He couldn't find any radio gear on it, yet he went on: "And, considering how much damage you've done on your travels, I'd say that's fairly decent of me."

"I don't think it cares," noted Buffy.

"I don't think it understands," he said. "It doesn't appear to have ears. Or any kind of audio receivers." He turned to her and the anger was back. "What is that? A gun?"

She hefted the device. "It's a Bosch. You're not one of those guys who thinks only men can use power tools?"

Annoyed, the Doc unclipped the screwdriver from his belt. "This is the only tool we need. Sonic. Not whatever that is." He stomped over to the blackened hole in the wall, passing through the gust of cloudy gas. The fire had gone out immediately but the blast damage was clear. He didn't need the screwdriver to tell him how bad it was.

Buffy approached him. "Okay, so, what did he do here?"

The blasted hole sparked and gushed out air. As it reached them they could hear the hiss of it.

The Doctor sighed. "Well, I'd say he dropped a proverbial stick of dynamite down our metaphorical trousers and blew our figurative privates off." As he looked to her, something surprised him.

Buffy turned to see the Robo-Nomad back on its feet. She reached for the dial on her Bosch and heaved it up.

An orange glow formed in the barrel of the Nomad's chest ray. Buffy shoved the end of the jackhammer into the jet of air and aimed.

The Doctor tried to reach for her weapon but was too late.

She pulled the trigger, unsure if it would even work.

A wave of energy erupted from her device. It looked potentially devastating but, by the time it reached the Nomad, most of the energy had been neutralised in the thinning atmosphere.

The Nomad was picked up off its feet and slammed to the deck. The Cyber body went limp.

She raised the blaster in one strong hand and looked at the Doc. "Setting one," she said, pointing to the dial.

He moved closer and saw the small piece of text.

_1: Sonic Pulse_

She threw him a smart-ass smile. "Thought you'd appreciate that one."

* * *

They were back in the control room, maskless and breathing the ship's air once more. Buffy was glad to hear sound again as the Doctor moved around and checked the systems. On one of the control desks was the square tank with the floating Nomad. He'd removed it from the broken Cyber body and carried it away with them. Personally, Buffy would have left it there to contemplate the error of its ways.

She lifted her new power tool and plonked it with a thump next to the Nomad. She was ready to get back on track and go home. "How are we going to seal that hole now there's a great flying saucer jammed in it?" she asked him.

"It doesn't matter anymore," he said in resignation. "He's done far too much damage. …We're not going anywhere."

"You're saying we're stuck? Again?"

"And we're still six months from Earth at full ship's speed." He had that look in his eyes again.

"What about _his_ ship?" she pointed a finger at the tank.

"It's wrecked," answered the Doctor.

Buffy drifted backwards, her body enveloping in a warm tiredness that chilled the hairs of her back, and slumped against a control desk.

_Unbelievable_, she thought. _First Slayer to go into space…_

…_And first to die there. _


	7. To The TARDIS!

**BUFFY the VAMPIRE SLAYER**

and the

**_Alien Tripods from Outer Space_ **

_To The TARDIS! _/ 00**7**

Buffy Summers looked up from the cold floor and into the Doctor's sympathetic eyes. "So…that's it," she sighed. "Curtains. We're done."

"Done?" He took a deep breath and unzipped his thermal suit. "What sort of defeatist attitude is that? Ready to quit when we're just getting started. You wouldn't last long as a companion."

"We're out of options, aren't we?"

He pried his feet out of the silver overalls to reveal his trusty blue suit, recovered his screwdriver, flipped it, caught it, and dropped it in his jacket pocket. "Come on – we'll take the evacuation pod." He gave a skip and went gallivanting out of the control room.

Buffy dragged herself up, grabbed her new Bosch, and followed after him. "You sure there _is_ one this time?"

"Yeeeess," he assured her, sounding rather non-committal.

"You know I'm not going to believe you 'till I see it myself."

* * *

A wide 3-foot thick door slid open in front of her to reveal a metal surface striped with diagonal red and yellow lines and Buffy watched as the Doctor found some invisible seal and opened a door on this new surface.

He shone a beaming grin her way and offered the entrance. "What did I tell you, ay? Never doubt the Doctor." He winked.

The image of the open hatch on this hidden wall behind the large thick door reminded her of an airport umbilical tunnel. It looked like he was right this time around.

She passed through into a small narrow room. To her left was a short row of lockers, to her right were 3 stasis tanks, a little different from the ones on the main ship. At the end of the small space was a computer terminal and swivel chair.

The Doctor shooed her along until she could squeeze up against the end of the lockers so that he could take the chair and work the computer. Seconds later the hatch closed up with a hiss and clang.

"Now, Buffy…" the Time Lord began, getting that worn look from her. "Taking the lifeboat will be a _lot_ slower than the ship. Plus, to avoid being followed by any more of those saucers, I may have to take us along a different route."

"How much slower are we talking?"

"Urrr… It could be another ten years or so."

"We'll be asleep again, right?" She pointed to the tanks. "In suspended animation like before."

"Absolutely," he confirmed. The actual trip, he knew, would be more like 20 years in a lifeboat going the long way around.

In minutes, he'd prepped their flight and opened up sleeper units 2 and 3.

In the meantime, Buffy had anticipated his awkward request and undressed.

The Doctor got up from the controls and turned to find her covering all of her modesty with the giant power tool. His left eyebrow went up.

"Can we get this over with?" she pleaded, hugging the jackhammer tightly.

He was about to do exactly that when he noticed the difference in the lifeboat's sleeper tanks.

They were smaller, slightly angled back, and had a cushioned surface to lean against. They looked a lot newer than the rest of the ship. In fact, now that he thought about it, so did the entire evacuation pod. Like it was a more recent addition to the ship. He bent backwards a little to see the glass face of the sleeper doors. There was still print on them, only slightly scuffed. He threw on his spectacles and made a closer examination.

Yes, it was newer by far. And the images and text, which served as a kind of instruction manual on the safe use of the Model KM49-G3PP-RS11 B-STAT 39324187 Hibernation and Stasis Unit, got the Doctor's busy mind going back over its previous considerations.

"Aah," he muttered, pulling his glasses off his face and looking back at the near-pornographic life model that was Buffy Summers. "I just remembered… The sleep tanks… Inorganic actualisation was perfected in the early _ninety-first_ century not the one-hundred and first! … Oh dear."

"You mean… I had to get naked for _nothing_?"

"Ah! No! … Not entirely." He rummaged through the lockers. "It would appear that our good ex-captain replaced the evacuation pod at some point with a more advanced model. Here we are." He brought out a pair of hangers with Lost in Space movie-style metallic-grey body suits dangling off them. "We _do_ need to wear these directly over our skin."

The Slayer looked doubtful as she put out a hand and beckoned for the stasis suit.

Taking turns in facing the other way, they each got into the suits. Buffy, with sleeves hanging loose over her hands, and the legs all bunched up at her ankles, shuffled around to see the Doc's suit was just as baggy. He showed her the buckle-like oval at his waist and pressed it. His outfit immediately shrank and became skin-tight.

Buffy copied him and pressed hers.

"Watch out for the–"

"Ow!" The suit closed in around her like a second skin and she felt something sharp dig into her forearm.

"…Intravenous line," he finished.

"Thanks, Doc." The suit had closed comfortably around her neck, wrists and ankles and she was instantly much warmer. Finally, she tied her frazzled hair back into a ponytail.

He showed her to stasis chamber 2 and helped her connect a pipe to the left breast of her suit.

"This's going to be a much simpler hibernation than the last one," he explained. "Everything your body needs, including some lovely preservatives, will be delivered directly into your bloodstream through the pipe and the needle in your arm." He paused. "Oxygen too. Which means… you won't actually be breathing. It _is_ going to be a strange and… horribly suffocating experience…"

It sounded like torture. "Are you sure you're a Doctor?"

He pursed his lips and gave her an earnest look. "This will all be over soon, Buffy."

She rested back into the soft angled bed of her sleeper. "Somehow… I think not."

He locked her in and disappeared. She tried to relax and wondered exactly how she could sleep and not breathe–

A mechanical arm suddenly crossed over her body and clamped a clear sheet of plastic film over her. It pressed into her face, forced her eyes shut and shrink-wrapped the inside of her mouth…

She tried to gasp but there was nothing. Her body was locked in concrete. She began to panic but her lights faded out and Buffy was gone.

* * *

Dawn… her mouth a sharp-edged smile… fangs white in moonlight… laughing at her.

Evil burned in her sister's eyes as she pounced and tore out Buffy's neck with her teeth.

Arterial blood sprayed out over Dawn's cackling face. There was no pain. No scream.

The world faded. She fell… blood oozing over her chin and into her mouth, choking her…

Heart pounding… blood gushing… Buffy slipped out of her world and into another…

...

Icy cold creeping in… blackness that went on forever… she drifted in the void of space.

Nowhere… Nowhen… Nobody… Nothing.

...

Angel through the doors of an elevator. The uniformed man no longer a man. Old as the stars.

Necropolis… a floating city once thriving… a sanctuary. Now a cemetery of the once-lived.

Gargoyles cry tears of blood… hands that hide their true faces… reaching out to touch her.

Escaping… fleeing… running through corridors of shadow… Angel pushing her onward.

Lurking Demons in the darkness… Angel on the floor in pain and blood, his people lost to time.

...

Castles on fire. Feet crunching over brimstone and bone… She stood before the gates of Hell.

Into hell she fell… Demons push her down into the desert sands. In the shadow of the pyramid.

Twisting in sand as it swallowed her alive, there was no future and no past she could escape to.

Yesterday… tomorrow… today… there was no time. Time was no more. All was now.

* * *

Buffy's eyes burst open and her lungs burned as she took her first breath in more years than she even realised.

She was laying almost completely horizontal now, still in the sleeper unit she had entered only moments ago. The door was open and the pipe already disconnected from her breast. She wasn't feeling particularly groggy, nor as weak as her last hibernation. She lifted an arm, worked her elbow, and made a fist. Still strong.

She had a sudden flash of some fading dream. A sour dream. A nightmare. She remembered Dawn… and something about Angel. It left her with an uncomfortable tension.

Buffy pulled herself up from the tank but couldn't make good footing on the slanted floor. The Doctor's sleeper was empty and he wasn't in the small craft anymore, but the hatch was open revealing a bright clear sky that filled the lifeboat with daylight. Real daylight. She let out a short breath of joyous relief and pulled down on the locker door above her.

She jumped aside quickly as the jackhammer dropped out and landed at her feet, followed closely by her boots.

As she fixed her boots on, a shadow fell on her from the hatch. It was the Doc.

"We've got a problem."

"Another one? Ugh." She didn't want to imagine what it could be this time. "Can't I at least have breakfast first?"

He threw her a foil-wrapped ration pack and vanished from the hole.

She climbed up out of the lifeboat and took a bite of the dry rice cake. She was standing on a slight angle over the hatch; the lifeboat partially dug into ground soil awkwardly. It looked like a rough landing. The first sight that caught her was of a bare landscape of lifeless soil and a far city in the distance. It wasn't a usual city that gleamed in the sun. It was dull, almost like its spires and skyscrapers were built up out of dirt. She turned to see the Doctor standing at the ragged edge of a cliff above a brown endless sea. His suit and rooster hair were blowing in the ocean breeze that now reached her. She untied her ponytail, closed her eyes and let her hair go free in the wind. The warm sun on her face and the gentle to-and-fro of the cool breeze felt wonderful.

Buffy opened her eyes again, remembering where they had been going in the lifeboat, and glanced around. She didn't recognise anything. "Where are we?" She had a bad feeling they'd landed on entirely the wrong planet and this time stuck would mean stuck.

"Sunnydale," answered the Doctor. "Circa ninety-one forty-four AD."

Buffy was stunned and a piece of rice cake fell from her open mouth. She looked around more thoroughly, then jumped from the evacuation pod and joined him at the edge of the cliff. Looking down its face she saw only a straight drop to the brown sea. "You said you left your time machine in a cave on the beach. … Where's the beach?"

"Exactly."

They both looked down again at the waters.

"You know," Buffy considered, "this does look a lot like the west cliff."

As the pair of them watched the sea beating against the rock wall below, they considered the many thousands of years that had passed here since they'd left Earth. If the TARDIS was parked in an alcove off the beach then surely it wouldn't have been long before someone stumbled across it. Realistically, what were the chances of it still being there, submerged under thousands of years of rising ocean?

A loud bang drew their attention back toward the far city and they saw something in the air – a small speck growing larger and kicking out a cloud of grey smoke.

Two more loud pops followed. It sounded like some old machine. A car with a bad exhaust.

Something was certainly approaching them and it soon became clear it was a uniformed man on a flying segway.

He dropped out of the sky and rolled up to them on two wheels. A middle-aged fellow in a scruffy uniform and cap, a bag slung over one shoulder and an electronic clipboard in one hand.

"Got a letter 'ere for a Buffy Summers and a Doctor Annoying," said the apparent postman. "Address: Emergency lifeboat on the west cliff, formerly Sunnydale, California – to be delivered today, twenty-ninth of Febtember, twenty-sixth year, third phase, ninth sun, blaa blaa, please sign here." He pulled out a sucker pad attached to his clipboard by a wire and slapped it onto Buffy's frowning forehead.

She looked at his clipboard where a sheet of paper covered in small print was attached at the corners by some kind of electrical nodes. There was a signature box at the bottom of the sheet but he'd offered her no pen. She puzzled at the future man. "…Huh?"

The four nodes sparked suddenly and the paper sheet tore itself clean in half.

The postman shrugged. "That'll do it," he said, pulling the wire and popping the pad loudly off her head. He gave her a small envelope, hopped on his segway and, with kicks and starts, flew away back to Dirt City.

Buffy gave the Doc a baffled look. "Don't you ever encounter _anything_ that makes _any_ sense whatsoever?"

"Rarely," he acknowledged and watched her pry the letter from the envelope.

She frowned again at what was written. It was a small piece of paper wrapped in plastic, with just 2 lines of hand-made text.

"Through water and rock to the blue box buried deep," she read. "The brave of breath, with trusty tools, can make the leap."

"What?" grumbled the Time Lord. "The blue box – that's the time machine we're looking for, but trusty tools and all that… it's a bit mysterious, isn't it?"

"Back to the Future," mumbled Buffy. It was one of those films, wasn't it? Michael J Fox saw the mad doc zapped by lightening and 2 minutes later a hundred-year-old letter arrived from the crazy-haired old time bandit. He was alive but back in the past. The idea, she realised, must have come from there because… "This's _my_ handwriting."

The Doctor eyed her quizzically. "You could have written something a bit clearer. Wait… Doctor_ Annoying_?"

"Yeah… I definitely wrote this." She looked down at the murky water, then felt the material of her sleeper suit. "Is it waterproof?"

"And water tight," he noted.

She handed him the letter and rice cake, not wanting to spend a second more in this dump of a place.

"You're…you're not going _in_…?"

She tied her hair back into its tail "The brave of breath can make the leap." Buffy stepped back, sucked up a lung-full of air, then threw herself feet-first off the cliff.

The doctor watched her hit the water and disappear with a splash.

* * *

Buffy went under and curled over, pulling and kicking herself deeper. She had no idea how far the water had risen since she last stood on this beach. With her eyes fixed shut, she swam down through the dirty ocean maybe twenty feet or more before her fingertips sank into wet sand.

If the cliff was the west cliff she knew, then she had an idea where to find the alcove and she spun around, dragging herself across the sunken beach until her hands met rock. She worked her way up over great boulders until it occurred to her…

7000 years ago, an alien tripod fell from the sky and took out the edge of that westward cliff before hitting the ocean. The rubble had fallen. The time machine had been locked away in a rocky tomb for millennia.

* * *

The Doctor watched anxiously for minutes before Buffy erupted from the brown Pacific waters.

"It's buried!" she yelled up to him.

He ran a hand through his hair and tried to think.

The Slayer was a step ahead. Or she hoped she was. "Throw me the Bosch!"

He clicked his finger at her, impressed by her initiative. The Doctor quickly rummaged in his right jacket pocket. Stethoscope… wind-up mouse… 3D glasses…

He searched the left pocket. TARDIS key… water balloons… another banana.

He found something and pulled out a pair of plastic goggles with a white rubber headband.

"I knew I'd find a use for you one of these days," he said, and tossed them over the edge.

* * *

The swimming goggles plopped onto the water in front of her and Buffy shook her head. The guy was prepared for just about any unusual situation. She pulled the tight band over her head, emptied the eye cups and pushed them tight over her eyes.

A moment later, he appeared above her, the jackhammer in-hand.

* * *

The Doctor examined the power tool and found 2 things of use when he looked at all the various switches, knobs and dials on the device. A forward spotlight and the waterproof setting. He set both to ON and held it out over the water.

* * *

"Let her rip, Doc!" she called out.

The jackhammer fell into her submerged arms and pulled her under.

The weight pulled her to the sea bed where the brown water was so cloudy she could just make out the rocks a few feet ahead. She reached her arm inside the tool to find the grip, turned it to the cave-in and braced her feet in the sand.

She suddenly remembered a nightmare about sinking into sand. She shook it off and fired.

The full wave of the sonic pulse erupted from the gun and sent her soaring backward and up until she broke the surface.

She managed to take a gasp of air before the Bosch dragged her down again.

The Doctor watched on restlessly.

* * *

The Slayer sank and touched down in the sand. Aiming the jackhammer at the rock cluster, the spotlight showed almost no damage to the boulders there. The cave-in must have been worse than she'd imagined. Buffy felt for the settings dial on the gun and turned it fully clockwise.

_Okay, impact blaster. Here we go…_

* * *

The Time Lord saw the shockwave bubble up and heard the deep rumble. It was a good long minute before Buffy reappeared, treading water.

"Think we found it! C'mon!" She waved him in.

He sighed and buttoned up his jacket. Sometimes, a Time Lord just had to do what he had to do.

He hit the water and popped up with his hair pasted to his head.

"Follow the spotlight," she told him, and gave him the goggles. She could get back to the submerged box blind. She gave the Doc a 10-second head start.

The Doctor could make out the bed of sand below as the light from the power tool resting there shone across and into the dark hole in the cliff side. He headed in and, on seeing the dark shadow of his beloved TARDIS, its top light aglow, windows still alight, the sign above the door still bright after all that time, his hearts were overjoyed. The blast must have woke her up, he thought, as he swam up to the door, pulled himself against the wood, and fished out his key.

Buffy dived blind and went straight for the Bosch, dragging it back toward the Doctor's weird space box. Swimming along with one hand feeling ahead, she suddenly found herself out of water and falling against a hard floor. Surprised, she opened her eyes and found herself half-in his time machine, the water making a wall in the doorway. She pulled her legs and jackhammer inside and closed the door behind her.

_Relief!_

* * *

"What _is_ this?" Buffy asked, looking around the room and wringing her hair.

The Doctor was drying his twinkle-stick screwdriver with a hairdryer plugged into his central console. "This is my TARDIS. T-A-R-D-I-S. It's short for–"

"And what's that again?" she pointed.

"This? It's my sonic screwdriver. It–"

"You're really from another planet? I mean _really_ really."

"Well, …yes."

"Why don't you look more… alien?"

His brows dropped. "Why don't _you_?"

Fair point. She looked up to the roof and around at the strange organic pillars and walls and cables. "This is your rocket ship?"

"No, no, it's a time and space ship…"

"But it travels in space?"

"…In a sense."

"Huh. …Are we gonna go?"

He put down the hairdryer. "Aren't you going to ask?"

"Ask what?"

"Why it's bigger on the inside… why it's an old police box…?"

"After today?"

"Right. You're not even a little surprised?" He sounded disappointed.

She shrugged indifferently. "It's weird. You're weird. My whole day has been weird."

* * *

Buffy had just about finished blow-drying her hair when the Doc, having taken a shower in some other room, returned wearing a fresh brown pinstriped suit. He threw a long coat over one of the pillars. "I'm sure there's some girly clothes around here somewhere if you want to change," he offered.

"Oh no," said Buffy. "I'm done gettin' naked. And, somehow, I think I might be needing this again before we're done." She tapped the chest of her sleeper suit and turned off the dryer. "So… are we taking me home anytime soon? 'Cos you've got this look in your eye like there's more bad news coming." She tied her hair back again to disguise its uncombed frizz.

"Well… I thought we might make a quick detour first. Now that I've got my TARDIS back and all." He had a playful manner about him once again, as when she'd first met him.

"And where could we possibly need to be that's more important than me going home for a hot bath and a Brad Pitt movie marathon?"

"You said to cure the Nomads' Chronophase virus, we need to change space – boost its immune system."

"We're really gonna help those things?"

"If we can. I have to hope that they're only as destructive as they are because of their situation. I have to give them a chance to be better. Either way, we should stop them causing more harm."

Buffy gave in. "And can you do it? Change space?"

"No, like I tried to tell you before, spacetime is a whole separate dimension to actual space space. The TARDIS only works in time and its_ relative dimension_ in space, not space and its relative dimension in time. Otherwise it would be a SARDIT. It travels temporal space."

Buffy looked glazed. "Now, you know I don't know what the hell you're talkin' about."

"You don't have to," said the Doctor. "The point is, you said we need a Space Lord. Someone who can bend space the way I bend time."

"And where do we find a Space Lord?" she asked.

"I've never _actually_ heard of such a thing," admitted the Doctor. "But, if Time Lords can be considered temporal architects of sorts… then the physics of a Space Lord would, in theory, make them builders."

"Builders?"

"Yes, builders. Builders of more than just…well…buildings and stuff, but builders of the universe." He took a long pause before adding; "Before it was effected by time."

"I thought the universe… just happened. Or was made by God or something?"

"Would a being with that much power really do the work himself? One could wonder. Tell you the truth, I'd be afraid to even find out. Some mysteries should stay mysteries. Not many. Just the ones with mind-crushing implications." He leaned against his central control station and folded his arms, taking on a more serious demeanour. "Now… the problem I have is… Time is everything to me. It's all I know. To try and imagine anything existing before time…is beyond my comprehension. Because space, by its very nature, is expanding. Moving. Movement cannot exist without time. You can't get from A to B without that measurable temporal distance between."

"So, where are you taking me?" she asked.

"Physically or mentally?"

"Both."

"Well," considered the Doctor, "if there really _are_ builders, who theoretically existed before time and space, which is unlikely, but if they did, then it wouldn't be improbable to deduce they are immortal, or at least not effected by time the same way as a mortal. Perhaps in a similar way as myself. And, if that's so, then where else to find the greatest builders in all existence than at the location of the greatest feat in building known to man?"

The Slayer took a few steps and turned, her eyes grown wide. "…Legoland?"


	8. The Dark at the Heart of the Pyramid

**BUFFY the VAMPIRE SLAYER**

and the

**_Alien Tripods from Outer Space_ **

_The Dark at the Heart of the Pyramid _/ 00**8**

"The pyramids of ancient Egypt!" announced the Doctor as he flung the TARDIS door open.

Buffy walked out of the police box and onto a palm-covered patch of grass. It was summer and the sun was blazing over the spire of a giant obelisk that rose before the mighty sphinx and…

…A huge pyramid of dark bronze glass?…Surrounded by a paved path, a parking lot and a long stretch of hotels and casinos?

"Nope," said Buffy. "That's Las Vegas."

The Doctor squinted. "We'll…er…just try that again."

* * *

"The pyramids of ancient Egypt!" the Doctor repeated. He stepped out of the TARDIS and lost his foot in a sand dune.

As he cursed at refilling his freshly-dressed sneakers with sand once again, Buffy slipped out of the blue box with more careful footing and immediately felt something… different.

The first thing that struck her was the feel of the sun on her face. The blazing Vegas heat replaced by a lesser humidity and the softer light of dusk, the sky to the left of her giving way to a deep orange glow. The next thing she noticed was the quiet. Gone was the bustle of traffic, and the air…was it thinner? Or just…clean?

She was in a different world – an old world – and she could actually feel it.

Her body pulsed with a surge of adrenaline at the thought of setting foot into history and actually seeing the ancient world with her own eyes when it was still cutting-edge and modern.

"Alright," said the Doctor, moving passed her. "If we want to find a Builder we should start with the greatest feat of building ever undertaken since the creation of the universe – the great Necropolis of Giza."

She frowned at the thought. "Is it, though? Really?" She turned to see the Doctor standing at the rise of a small sand dune, the fading fire of the dusk sky behind him.

He beckoned her. "Look at this…"

From his tone he was offering to present her with evidence to the fact and she struggled up the fine sands of the rise to join him. The sight beyond stole her breath.

Below them, with the last shimmer of sun on the far horizon, lay the Necropolis of Giza, and it was not as she had seen it in photographs. Only one large Pyramid stood in all its glory, a second one standing half-built. Buffy's mouth fell open and the sudden rush of adrenaline threatened to knock her off her feet. She was looking down over the Great Pyramids of Giza right in the middle of their construction.

The half-pyramid was the nearer structure and it rose from the sands in ever-decreasing brickwork fashion to a flat top where a great clay and mortar ramp of unbelievable proportion led away towards a distant quarry. To the right, easterly, about a kilometre from the build, stood a small square limestone structure on the banks of what must be the ancient Nile River. Just behind it, the distinct shape of the Sphinx could be seen and it looked finished from where she stood. There were other small pyramid structures and low rectangular buildings, but her eyes now turned to the furthest superstructure. The first complete pyramid of Giza to the north. It was not the crumbling heap of ragged blocks she had seen in pictures, but a giant smooth spear tip that pierced upward through the desert floor. Its surface was deep blue on one side and awash with orange on the other as it reflected the sky just as the Nile did far off beside it. On its eastern side stood a temple entrance and the whole pyramid, which covered a greater surface than 6 soccer fields, was surrounded by a wall a good few metres from the base.

"The Great Pyramid," intoned the Doctor. "By your time it will be the only Seventh Wonder still relatively intact. And the oldest." He pointed to the new build. "The pyramid of the Pharaoh Khafre still under construction. **N**o cranes, no lorries or… trucks, or whatever you Yankies call them. No machines to cut the bricks. All done by hand. The design alone is too advanced for future minds. The very planning of it will boggle the brains of men for thousands of years." He turned to her with a secret smile. "But not _ours_."

Buffy, still struck dumb, looked again at the plateau. It was not the baron desert she would have expected. There were grasses and palms in small patches spread about the area, especially off to the right of her where, in the distance, there seemed to be a large township on the riverbank filled with greenery.

"The worker's village," the Doctor noted.

She turned back to him with wide glowing eyes. "When is this?"

"Twenty-five forty BC." He shrugged. "Give or take."

After a silent moment she glanced down at herself. "I'm wearing a space-suit," she pointed out. She observed the Time Lord's new brown clothes. "And you, with your suit and tie. Aren't we, I dunno, a bit conspicuous?"

He looked confused by the very notion. "I don't usually have a problem…"

Buffy's face changed suddenly and the surprised Slayer was a Valley Girl once more. "We gonna meet King Tut?" she asked eagerly, like she'd just stumbled on a great opportunity to rub shoulders with the boy King.

"King _Tut_? We're way, way before his time."

She sighed with disappointment. "What about Queen Nefertiti?"

"Noooo, we're way before _her_ time too."

"…Cleopatra?"

"Way, way, _way_ before hers."

Buffy huffed. "Jeez. Aren't we gonna see _anyone _famous?"

The Doctor shook his head. "You Humans and your celebrities."

He told her to wait while he collected something from his TARDIS and, alone, Buffy found herself drifting down the dune towards the astonishing scene laid out before her.

As she reached the base and drew onto the flat land of the plateau, she realised that three men were approaching her in the dwindling light. They were dark-skinned and bare-chested with simple white skirts. Two wore hair in tight black curls that were short, tucked behind the ears – one with a battle axe strapped to his belt, the other a shouldered bow. The man leading them was bigger, with a gold and emerald neck piece and a white Tut-style head-dress. He approached with a spear in hand.

Buffy had nowhere to hide. They were close and, from the way they moved, had already spotted her. What was she going to tell them? And then it occurred to her… "Oh no… they're Egyptians. Ancient Egyptians. I don't speak Ancient Egyptian. I don't even speak very good English. … Oh damn… English wasn't even around now, was it? This's gonna be a disaster."

The tall lead guard stopped a couple of metres away and pointed his copper spear tip at her head. "And just who the hell are you, then?"

Buffy was flabbergasted and began to sputter, "…Buffy… um… Buffimus…Maximus."

The bowman turned to the axeman. "What is that? Sumarian?"

"Too early for Romans?" she mumbled nervously. "I shoulda paid attention in history class." Where the hell was the Doctor? The three soldiers were scowling at her. "How about we talk about this over a coffee? …Starbucks? …Everywhere's got a Starbucks."

"She must be a slave girl," said the axeman.

She didn't like that image one bit, nor the kind of treatment it would bring. "What? No! I'm… a gladiator. A…a warrior. A _soldier_! Like you."

They laughed. It was a bellowing hearty laugh. Now it was Buffy who scowled.

"She is a bit clean and tidy for a slave, don't you reckon?" said the bowman.

"Yes," agreed the big one with the spear. "She is quite tasty and exotic, isn't she? The King will make you his concubine."

She balked. "The King _won't_."

The three men stood at arms as the Doctor came skidding awkwardly down the dune. "I couldn't help overhearing," he said as he came to a halt. "Did one of you say there was a King about?"

"Who are you?" demanded the head guard.

"Building Inspector." He flashed his psychic wallet.

The guard in the head-dress turned his spear at Buffy. "Is this one with you?"

"Yes," he replied, "it's my slave." She gave him a severe looking-at. "Cost me three camels and a rug," he said. "I realise now I was had. She's rude, obnoxious, a terrible belly-dancer and she can't even boil an egg. She's for sale if you're interested. One camel." They weren't going for it. "Half a camel? …The hump?"

"_How_ rude and obnoxious?" asked the tall spearman.

"You've got a face like an ass," she fired at him and turned to the Doc. "And you're about to have yours royally kicked."

The Doctor opened his hands to the men. "Any takers?"

The three soldiers eyed each other briefly and the axeman said to the spearman, "Should we see them to the Field Marshal's tent?"

* * *

They were soon being led toward the pyramids by the tall guard, the other two falling to the rear. Buffy regarded the Doctor and saw he was actually relishing their capture.

"At some point, Doc," she began in a whisper; "we need to have a little chat about these identities you come up with. And maybe start discussing them _before_hand."

He pursed his lips and gave a single nod, then handed something across to her. "Here."

"What's this?" She turned the raggy sheet of paper over in her hands.

"It's a little like psychic paper. You think of a piece of published text or art you want to see and that's what it displays. I gave it a papyrus theme."

"Why aren't those guys speaking Ancient Egyptian?" she asked, tucking the layered paper into her sleeve.

"They are," he answered. "It's… it's… complicated. Well, not _that_ complicated. I'll explain later."

They were taken to a large tent at the foot of the unfinished pyramid where a stocky man in a red scalp-cap sat. He was with a thinner man in simple robes pouring over a heap of papyrus papers and a table covered in a map of the site with a host of wooden pieces scattered over its surface. It seemed they were plotting the next phase of construction. Either that, or an invasion.

The stocky marshal looked up at them with little interest.

"We found them wandering the dunes to the south," said the spearman.

"I need to speak to the person in charge of this build immediately," said the Doctor, wasting no time and speaking with authority.

The Field Marshal looked to the thinner man, who asked, "In what regard?"

He waved his wallet once again. "We've received a number of complaints and… I have to assess the safety of the site."

The stout marshal huffed and threw a handful of papers down. "How many more pressures will the Vizier deliver upon our heads before this project is done?" he rumbled in annoyance. "Deal with this," he said to the thin man. "I'm retiring 'till morning." He pushed himself up from his stool and vanished into the back of his tent, the flaps closing behind him.

* * *

The robed man, having admitted to being in charge of organising the workforce and overseeing the build, led them out of the marshal's tent and north towards the half-made pyramid. The sky was now a deep shade of blue, the sun faded from the horizon. To the east the Nile was hidden in shadow and the Sphinx was little more than a dark shape in the distance.

Buffy and the Doctor stood at the base of the new pyramid. Even at half its finished height it was still a towering structure and the ramp that ran for hundreds of metres from the quarry soured above them to the current apex. This, Buffy thought, was more like the image she knew. Giant blocks of limestone built up in decreasing layers, but crisp and clean and new, not decayed and crumbling.

"I'm not sure I understand the Vizier's concern in this regard," said the overseer in a deep soft tone. "He expressed no such worries on his last visit."

"Oh," said the Doctor, "I'm sure it's just a formality. But I can't help wondering why such a feat, even as great as this, should bring so many men to an early end."

The overseer looked offended and he pointed across to the shadowy spike of the nearby first pyramid – the Great Pyramid. "You see that? Two-hundred and eighty cubits in height. Each side four-hundred and forty cubits in length at the base. Millions of stone blocks mined and dragged from the distant quarry, the surface stones brought across the Nile from Tura. Hundreds of thousands of men working at height with stones the Gods themselves could not raise from the ground. It took half a lifetime to complete. Do you know how many perished by its completion?" He turned back to the newer structure. "This build is almost as massive and at daybreak we are expected to begin working the men day and night." He calmed down then, and sighed. "There will be casualties. What would you have me do?"

The Doctor had a few suggestions but he bit his tongue. This, after all, was not the purpose of his visit. "They do look very complicated," he said. "The very _idea_ of them… Who designed them exactly? Who made the plans?"

The man looked at him sideways. "Why… _Ra_, of course."

_Ra?… _ "The Sun God?"

"And father of all Gods," the man added.

"But… how do I put this…? Which prophet did he speak through?"

"Prophet?" He didn't seem to understand the concept. "It was Amun-Ra himself who conferred with King Khafre, and with his father King Khufu before that when the Great Portal of Khufu was constructed."

"Portal?" asked Buffy.

The man pointed to the Great Pyramid.

"King Khufu's tomb," said the Doctor.

"It's not a tomb, sir," the man corrected. "This structure is a portal – a gateway for the soul to ascend to the heavens. The design was given to us by the Gods."

The Doctor, puzzling, walked ahead a little way and Buffy joined him.

"Maybe we should ask someone a little less… high on faith?" she whispered.

"You won't find a man, woman or child in this land who does not give due credit to the Gods," the overseer called to them. "And it has nothing to do with faith, girl. We know they exist."

Buffy shared an embarrassed look with the Doctor. "How can you know they exist?" The whole point of religion, she thought, was faith.

"Within the ancient mythos, the Gods live among the people," the Doc told her. "They're real tangible beings."

"This isn't the Seventh Voyage of Sinbad," she muttered.

"Yes," agreed the man. "The Gods walk among us. Though, it has been many years since they were seen on this corner of the River."

"Clash of the Titans," the Doctor muttered back at her. "Or Jason and the Argonauts. Not Sinbad." His attention returned to the overseer. "That's a shame," he sighed. "I could do with having a word with one of them."

"I'm sure you would," came his amused reply. He then moved closer to the Doctor and lowered his tone. "There are some who believe one of them still remains here. There was a conflict among them many years ago, and Osiris – overseer of the underworld and keeper of the dead – he was cast out by Amun-Ra. This was in the time of King Khufu, during the building of his Great Portal."

The Doctor was intrigued. "What caused this conflict among the Gods?"

"No-one knows. But there are whisperings that Osiris was buried beneath King Khufu's portal – deep beneath the foundations. However, no work was carried out below the foundation level. I know – I was here." It was clear this man had been harbouring these questions of secrets for a long time.

"Thank you," said the Doctor, patting the man on his shoulder. "You've been a great help. Don't let us keep you from your important…work stuff. We'll just take a quick look around and be on our way. I don't think there's going to be any safety issues worth troubling the Vizier with."

"And I don't think you came here for such a purpose," said the man knowingly. He pulled his robes around himself and went away towards the nearby encampment.

When he looked back to Buffy, the Doctor saw she was testing out the papyrus he'd given her. He then saw something he never expected to see on a papyrus scroll. The logo of Wikipedia.

"There _is_ a basement chamber a hundred metres down," she said, pointing to the loaded image of a cutaway of the Great Pyramid. "Even the historians don't know what it was made for."

"Sounds worthy of investigation, don't you think?"

"Oh, yeah. Somethin's off all right." She rolled the scroll and tucked it away as the Doctor headed for the temple at the base of the Great Pyramid. Buffy stopped and looked around in wonder.

"Buffy? Everything alright?"

"Yeah… Just…" Was this really real or a weird dream? "Yeah," she moved quickly ahead of him. "Come on."

The Doc grinned and followed the Slayer.

* * *

They headed for the eastern side of the Great Pyramid. There, facing the Nile, was the Funerary Temple that stood as an entranceway leading beyond the surrounding wall enclosure.

They passed three small pyramids in a line and a cemetery of low buildings before clambering onto a long causeway that led from the river to the temple. They easily got by the guards at the temple opening with the Doctor's trusty wallet. Inside they only saw one monk-like figure who quickly took leave of them.

Buffy found herself in a torch-lit open courtyard with a covered walkway all around. Red granite pillars held up the overhanging white ceiling stones, which were decorated with a hieroglyphic border. As she looked at the symbols of Ancient Egyptian writing above her head, she fancied they reformed as words before her eyes, saying:

_Here stands for all time a memorial to Khnum-Khufu a King of these great lands now resting with the Gods among the stars_

She realised with some sadness that nothing of this would remain by her own time. Lost to all mankind forever. Except for her. _I am here_, she thought. _I have seen it_.

Lost to mankind, lost to womankind, but not lost to Slayerkind.

"Well, hello there."

Buffy turned to the Doctor. Between two red pillars, perched on a black stone statue of a seated king, was a great big monkey. It had a bushy coat of white fir, dark skin on the face where the long snout protruded, and close-set black eyes. Its down-turned mouth and heavy brow gave it a thoughtful grouchiness that reminded her of Clint Eastward in his old age. She quickly realised it was not any old monkey but a decent sized baboon. The Doctor gave its hairy cheek a scratch, which did little to interest the primate. It simply sat there with its hands on its knees in a disturbingly human pose.

"Quit monkeying around, Doc," said Buffy as she handed him a flaming torch and led the way through the temple.

The pair stepped through to the sands within the walled area and gazed up at the smooth flat face of the giant pyramid. The perfection of its lines beggared belief yet there it stood just a few metres ahead, reflecting pale moonlight across its immaculate surface. Buffy checked her scroll again as they approached the angled structure, and pointed to a small square opening about 15 metres above their heads.

"There's a descending passage there," she said. "It goes about a hundred metres down to the lower chamber."

"It doesn't look very wide," noted the Doctor.

"Nearly a metre. Wide enough. But…" she examined the diagram. "Even if we get down there we might not get back up. And… I think it says here somewhere that the passage is blocked up along the way." She scrunched the sheet up and put it away. "It's not looking good."

The Time Lord put his hand against the surface of the ancient monument and ran his palm over it. "It's still warm from the sun," he said in awe. "Come here."

She went to him and let him place her hand against the radiating surface.

"Now," he whispered, "doesn't that make it so much more real for you?"

She had to admit that the hot stones seemed to gain life on touching them. It was one thing to see something amazing – something impossible – but to hold it in your grasp and know it was real… To know that, at this moment in this time, she was within history itself. She was touching it, leaving her handprint on its surface. She was part of it now.

Buffy turned to him and gave a short burst of laughter.

"How big is the lower chamber?" the Doctor asked.

"It said thirty feet on the flat I think. Not sure how high. Why? You think you can squeeze your Tardum-thing in there?"

"TARDIS. And, yes. I think I might give it a go."

They turned to leave and jumped out of their skins, the Doctor almost losing his grip on the burning torch. The baboon was sitting at their feet with its arms folded across its knees, watching them curiously.

The Doctor laughed at their jumpy nerves and dug into his pocket. He retrieved his spare banana and dropped it in the monkey's lap then gave his own nose a tap.

"Did you just bribe a baboon with a banana?" Buffy commented as they left the way they came.

"Just a little something so he'll keep his mouth shut," the Doctor replied.

The baboon swivelled around on his raw behind and watched them go as he gave the fruit a sniff and peeled it open.

* * *

A darkness more pitch than that of outer space itself gave way to a blue glow as the Doctor's police box materialised in an underground stone chamber. The door swung in and released a brilliant white light as a large glowing ball flouted out from within and bounced against the low ceiling of the room. A thin wire hung from the bottom of the light-ball giving it the look of a party balloon.

The Doctor stepped out in his faux-suede overcoat and shivered in the cold fusty air. He reached up and tugged on his floating light, which had destroyed all trace of shadow from the small chamber. "I should travel with you more often," he said as Buffy joined him. "I get to use all my toys."

"You should give the balloon to the baboon," she sniggered.

"What? Bribe a baboon with a banana _and_ balloon?" he joked. "Don't be a buffoon."

"Okay, that's enough."

"…Yeah." He looked over the TARDIS to see the ceiling just a few inches above its blue light. "That was close."

"Whoa!" Buffy held out her arms and regarded the red light glowing on the breast of her sleeper suit. "It's heating up." _Remarkable_. "I'm totally keeping this thing."

The Time Lord walked carefully around the room; a modest rectangular space cut from the bedrock on which the Great Pyramid stood. It was empty, dusty, and had a distinctly unfinished quality. There was a small square in the centre of the floor that was lower than the rest and opposite the TARDIS door was the beginnings of a corridor that led clearly to a dead end.

"What's the first unusual thing you notice about this room?" asked the Doctor.

Buffy wasn't sure if he was actually asking her the question or thinking aloud. "…The dead-end corridor?"

"The dead-end corridor!" he declared. Ever the intrepid explorer, he went directly for the narrow passage ahead of them and played with the wall at its end. He played his hands over its surface then gave his screwdriver a try. He returned to the chamber scratching his head.

Buffy pointed down. "Then there's the sunken floor."

The Doctor's eyes lit up as he knelt down for a closer inspection. "A pointless chamber with a pointless corridor… and a shallow pit dug into the floor…" His sonic wand buzzed as he waved it over the pit and examined its findings. The pit only _seemed_ shallow. The base was nothing more than a thin stone piece placed to block the drop. "A fifty-foot drop," he said, and looked up at his companion. "There's another room below."

Buffy had the same look in her eyes as he expected was in his own.

She pushed the TARDIS door open to let him back in. "Going down?"

* * *

Buffy was the first out of the police call box and into the icy cool sub-basement area, warmed by her protective stasis suit. The Doctor followed with his light balloon and it instantly revealed a wide stone-cut passage that led them into a much larger chamber than the one above. They saw the opening in the ceiling that led 50 feet up.

They had found their way to the secret room beneath the secret room at the heart of the Great Pyramid of Giza. And they were not alone. There was another person present, just as the overseer had indicated.

A man with pale green skin in ragged bandages slumped on the dusty floor, his arms held up to the sides – chained to the roof. Before him two decorative black plinths a couple of metres apart. Each had on top a rustic golden vase.

For the Doctor, there was a haunting familiarity to the scene. He moved closer cautiously.

The walls were decorated with simple painted imagery, most of it difficult to make out. Drawings of the captive prisoner and the plinthed vases, with two large jackals painted on either side of the rear wall.

The Doctor reached for one of the golden jugs, already knowing what would happen.

As his fingers touched the rim, the vase became aglow with yellow light. The second vase did the same. They were the bars of the cell. Breaking them, he felt certain, would free the prisoner. _There may, however, be a cost too steep to pay…_

Buffy knelt in front of the green man and took his lowered chin in her hand. She lifted his head. His face had a definite Egyptian/Middle-Eastern quality and a worryingly villainous quality. He was bald and a narrow long Egyptian God-style beard grew out of his square chin. His gaze was vacant, but his body was alive. "What's wrong with him?"

The Doctor came in for a closer inspection, which seemed to require his spectacles. He waved a hand in front of the man's eyes.

_Very technical_, thought Buffy.

The Doctor gave Green Man's vitals a check with the sonic screwdriver. "He's mindless," he concluded. "This man… or creature, or God, or whatever people believe him to be, has no soul. He's without spirit. The essence of what he is…is not here. I've seen something like this before."

He cast his mind back to his time on the Sanctuary Base orbiting a black hole. Faced with an impossibly old language that even the TARDIS could not translate. And the Pit – where an ancient civilisation buried a Beast in an eternal prison. A staggeringly cruel prison where remaining meant captivity for all time and escape meant certain doom. The perfect catch-22.

Yet, the mind of that beast had found a way out and it had made claims that the Doctor simply could not come to terms with. That it was locked away before time and the universe were formed.

At the time, the Doctor had made clear that those concepts didn't fit his 'rule'. That, he had told Ida Scott, was why he travelled – to be proven wrong.

Not much had changed since then. The Doctor was still troubled by the notion of a 'before' to time but now, with the concept coming back around to bother him, he wanted to know more. Whether it was good for him or not.

"Then where is he?" asked Buffy, pulling him back into the present. "In one of these vases?"

"I don't know. Trapped somewhere else, or free – escaped maybe. Certain kinds of minds seem to be able to reach out beyond their body's confinement."

Yes, it seemed he was looking at another eternal prison. He wondered if the prison that held the Beast back on that impossible planet was of the same origin. Could it have been a creation of the Builders? Did they indeed predate time? If so, then he was a prisoner at the doing of his own people, which didn't bode well. And there were two other points that bothered him… "There are two things about this that bother me," he told Buffy.

After a few seconds of silence she pressed him, "…Care to share?"

"He's green."

"That's kinda racist."

He shook his head and pried the papyrus from her sleeve. A moment later he showed her a painting of a bandage-wrapped man. Green skin, gold neck piece, long black false beard and a white feather-plumed hat that looked a lot like a bowling pin. "This is an image of the Ancient Egyptian God Osiris."

Buffy looked to the prisoner before them. Green and bandage-wrapped, his head was smooth-shaven but his chin did bear a narrow plaited black beard, which stretched as a thin border along his jaw line and ended level with the top of his ears.

The Doctor looked at her as if to rest some kind of hard-to-swallow case.

"He's not wearing a hat," she argued weakly.

In response, he pulled something out from behind the man's back. A dusty white bowling pin head-dress.

_Okay_, she admitted, _that's pretty hard to disclaim_. "And the other thing?"

"We were told he was put here by his own people. You have to wonder what he did to deserve _this_. This is a severe form of imprisonment that I've only ever seen used to contain something of pure evil. A Beast who claimed to be the Devil. Claimed to have been imprisoned before time and the universe came into being. Imprisoned by the 'Disciples of the Light'. A Beast who aimed to free himself and make war with God."

"Well," considered Buffy, "if you believe the Bible, the Devil _was_ an Angel cast out of Heaven for making war with God. God created light… The Angels are his disciples…"

The Doc's face looked sour at the taste of her proposition.

"If anything could have existed before time and the universe," she offered, "then God would fit that bill. Y'know…if you can believe in all that."

He didn't look any more willing to accept that theory than he had a moment ago. "I need to talk to this man if we're going to get any answers."

Buffy looked at the face of the Green Man. His cheeks were squished in the Doctor's hand, his mouth drooling, and the eyes all over the place. "Good luck with that. This guy looks like he's smoked one too many J's."

The Doctor sighed. He was facing a day when all his rules and beliefs were being put to the test. The notion of an existence prior to time and the universe… and the notion of magic, which was equally outside his framework of accepted reality. In spite of all that, here he was looking for pre-time Builders with the mythical Vampire Slayer – a girl who fought the supernatural with, on occasion (according to the fables in the Chronicles), magic spells and incantations. He could see two options ahead of him. Denial, or acceptance. Turn his back on this spiralling little adventure, or go along with it and see where it took him. As soon as the idea of choice occurred to him, it was already made, fixed, and decided.

"It's just a simple matter of finding his soul and returning it to his body," he stated finally. "You might know a little something about that."

Buffy made the connection after a short frowning period. "The Orb of Thesula?" She considered the suggestion, feeling like there was something that didn't fit. It was hard work but she dug away at her brain to find what Giles-type knowledge she held regarding the orbs.

As far as she knew, they were used to bring a soul from the nether realms and contain it until it could be put back into its original body. But there was something else. She gave up on her lame brain and checked her papyrus again, calling up a page from one of Giles' books. "But that's a… 'spirit vault for rituals of the undead'."

"And another word for undead?" he asked her. "…_Immortal_. A lifeform that can be trapped in an eternal prison that, possibly, in theory, as unlikely as it may be, predates time itself would be naturally immortal. Hypothetically speaking."

"Okay… I guess."

"Remember I said you were a myth?" he recalled, taking on a purposeful manner. "Well you had a spin-off myth about a vampire with a soul."

"Angel?"

"I think we need to go have a chat with your ex-boyfriend."

She found the idea of seeing Angel (the real Angel, not some phantom of him) in all this bizarrity she was experiencing was actually pretty desirable. "Next stop L.A.?"

"Actually…" He gave her a look. It seemed like he was about to reluctantly reveal a secret. "You may have seen him somewhere else more recently."

"In the space city?!" _I knew it!_ "You said it was just a…projection of my subconscious. All the other angel-related stuff playing with my mind. Just a …coincidence of imagery."

His face darkened. "There's far too much coincidence of imagery going on in Angel City."

She wasn't sure what he was referring to but his attitude was a little unnerving. She noted how easily he could shift from manic to silly to deathly serious in a sudden jarring moment as if at the flick of a switch. The Doc headed back to the TARDIS and she asked after him, "You need your balloon back?"

He stopped at the corridor. "Leave it. We'll be back in a few seconds to talk to our green God here."

She caught up to him. "We gonna break him out?"

"Depends what he's got to say for himself." He looked to the vases again and thought about the catch-22. "Maybe yes."

At that, the back wall of the chamber seemed to let out a long-awaited hiss and the twin murals depicting oily black jackals began to distort. Their golden collars seemed to shimmer in the light and their rouge eyes came alive with bright red fire.

"What the hell?…Doctor?

He blinked at the sight. "Oh, that can't be good."

The jackals leapt from the wall and landed on the dusty floor as real as any real glowy-eyed angry jackal could be. They bore their sharp white teeth and growled together at the duo.

"Any ideas, Doc?"

_Evil spirit jackals_, pondered the Doctor. "I'd say this is your department," he told the Slayer. "I think I'll defer to your judgement on this one."

The black beasts came a step closer.

Buffy took her sweet time replying. "Alright then," she acknowledged, then finally said, "Run for your life," and she did.

It sounded good to him and he joined her, barrelling down the passageway with the snarling dogs at their heels.

His hearts racing, the Doctor bounded into his TARDIS behind the Slayer and slammed the door.

Leaning back against it, listening to the snapping and scratching of the impossible jackals, the Doctor exhaled with exhilaration and remembered a proverb he'd heard somewhere:

'Man fears time, but time fears the pyramids'

_So too do Time Lords, it would seem…_

"Buffy…" The Doctor ran to the control console and set in their next destination. "There's something I need to explain to you about where we're going."

"About Angel City?"

"No," he replied. "…About Weeping Angels."

* * *

(*Excerpts taken from the Doctor Who episodes '_The Impossible Planet_' and '_The Satan Pit_'.)

Just wanted to mention that I know there are just mountains of theories about the timescale, methods and civilisations that may have built the pyramids and sphinx. Everything from aliens to slaves to tax-paying workers, or that the dates are more like 10-12'000 BC rather than 2500 BC. There really is no definitive answer so I just went with what worked for this story.

One amazing theory is that, with the body of the sphinx being so aged in comparison to the head, it was in fact once a giant lion statue pointing to the constellation Leo about 12'000 years ago and it was much later that the head was recut as the face of a pharaoh. This could explain why the head is so disproportionately small in comparison to the body. Again, this is just one theory. Geologists believe the body was subjected to weathering by torrential rain, which could only have happened in that desert 10-12 millennia ago. The head, in contrast, shows no such water erosion damage.  
I wonder if it's possible, with the body buried in the sand, that the Egyptians had no idea there was a lion beneath that head. Hard to imagine.  
Anyway… on with the show…  
Or on with the typing, at least.

**Image of Osiris/The Green Man/The Immortal Prisoner can be found at my Facebook page. Just ask for _Johnny Fanfic_**


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